Obama 2.0: MySpace is My Space

According to a recent Mercury News article, Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign has taken control of a MySpace page listed under his name. The site originated with Los Angeles paralegal Joe Anthony who has acted as moderator for 2.5 years. According to the Mercury article, “At first, that arrangement was fine with the Obama team, which worked with Anthony on the content, promoted the link and even had the password to make changes.” After being asked to turn over the site, Anthony changed the administrative rights and requested approximately $50,000 for his efforts.

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH MYSPACE?
According to Compete.com, MySpace captures 11.9% of all time spent on the internet, more than Yahoo, Google etc. That works out to about 53,000 years. With 60,046,249 current users, the tool appears to have more than infiltrated politics.

Apparently Obama’s handlers have decided that social networking users, the ones profiled by politicos as disillusioned youth and fringe narcissists, might actually overlap with the voting population. And now, after letting a third-party host interact with constituents for more than 2 years, the spin doctors have decided that MySpace is no longer Anthony’s space because the online community has morphed into a mainstream and therefore valued voice.

Screw you guys. Did you really think the internet was going away? While all of you were heralding the Dean campaign’s ingenuity, none of you were actually making any recommendations? Obama, you need to fire someone's ass and hire someone young and clever immediately. (Pick Me)

And if Hilary Clinton is smart, she should offer the following response:
"If Barack Obama is unwilling to pay Joe Anthony $50,000 for two years of advocacy, tech support and writing (a steal for the number of hours clocked in and the number of connections made), while at the same time seizing control of what is effectively Anthony's intellectual property (until licensed otherwise), then what exactly does this say about his stance on the arts, copyright and his efforts within the creative community?"

For future reference, all media relations people should be required to memorize the above xkcd Map of Online Communities. "(CC License)

BC POLITICS
For the happenings of the BC legislature visit Sean Holman's blog, Public Eye. Either Holman has some disguises and a Whisper 2000 or he has some serious inside informants. In any case, if Holman so much as burps, the public affairs bureau hears it and responds. His articles are required reading for the strategist and the comments section is an amazing cross section of union rants, corporate messaging, staff diatribes and politico bickering.

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Obama 2.0: MySpace is My Space

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