Between Barack and a MySpace

~another average joe

Thanks for the article about "MySpaceGate." You ran into the same "no reply/comment" that many Senator Obama supporters are getting trying to get to the bottom of this mishandled event. It's very unfortunate that it happened in the first place when it could've been handled so easily in a positive manner. As your article clearly points out that there are many others out there that understand that a HTML link to barackobama can just as easily gone to barackobama08 or some other available URL at the time. It was not a wise decision to use the ego card and take the original URL from a person that was once one of Senator Obamas strongest supporters and leave a community of people wondering why it had to be done in the first place.

This was done from what I understand by a campaign staff person named Joe Rospars and is the person who posted the blog that started the needless firestorm. This person was hired by TeamObama supposedly for his Internet knowledge, I'm thinking at this point in time that's not going to look to highly on his future resume. If this person was hired because of his knowledge, how is it that he could not understand that another free MySpace URL could have been created in a few short minutes and then work with Joe Anthony? Imagine for a moment if you will; that Senator Obama had two MySpace campaign sites with over 160,000 friends on both of them, instead of one with 80,000 which is where they are currently at? (just an FYI the original “unofficial” site that Joe Anthony created and managed which was taken away and then returned a week later without any content was deleted)

How simple could this have been done? One (1) bulletin sent out of the existing “unofficial” barackobama site that read something like the following:

“Hello all my friends that support Senator Obama. I have some great news for everyone! The senator has decided to make an “official” page here on MySpace and I would hope that all of you will click this add me link to join that site! I look forward to moving ahead stronger than ever and will continue to supply everyone with any information that I receive. Thanks again, Joe Moderator”

In a very short period of time there could have been an “official” site setup with 160,000 friends on board and at least one very supportive Joe.

I personally am still looking for a response from TeamObama pertaining to the defamatory blog that was posted by Joe Rospars over 3 weeks ago now. I want to give my vote to someone that has Integrity & Accountability and hopefully that can be Senator Obama?

More information pertaining to MySpaceGate can be found over at www.myspace.com/dotherightthingbarack

~another average joe

Vincent Valk

Another Average Joe,

Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I took a quick look at your myspace page-you were right, the interview with Anthony did take place last week, though I kept up an e-mail correspondence with him for until publication. At some point, I'll have to poke around your community some more and maybe see about any late-breaking developments in this story. Never too late to post a follow-up, even if it's just a blog post.

The more I think about this, the more it seems Obama campaign knew they could get away with this, and that's why they did it. I think they wanted to come to an amicable settlement with Joe Anthony, but they probably thought he would ask for $500 or $1,000 and be done with it. When that didn't come to pass, they knew they could circumvent the guy and few people would hold them accountable, which is exactly what happened. Even on MySpace they're back at the number one spot, with 83,000 friends. They got a small amount of bad publicity and moved on.

I don't know if this particular story is really going anywhere, but I think we'll hear of more stuff like this as the campaign progresses. It's just too easy for a big campaign to roll over a guy like Anthony. At the same time, campaigns to have a justifiable interest in controlling their message; yet, with the Internet, so much of your message is spread by uncontrollable word-of-mouth. How do you reconcile these seemingly contradictory impulses-message control, and the need for a positive, independent, buzz-without rolling over the little guy? If anything, the Obama campaign has provided a good illustration of what not to do, though the price for screwing up is not yet high enough.

~another average joe

Vincent, thank you for taking a quick look at the page and I welcome you back at anytime. I am just a contributor to that community page as are the others, but we are hoping to still have the original issue addressed. Like all grassroots communities, you start at the bottom and your cause takes you in the appropriate direction.

I believe that your observation that they thought they could get away with it is probably a viable one. The reason for the ”Do the Right Thing” website though is because we believe that he shouldn’t be able to. I think that there are very few people today from any political party that want to have to put up with “business as usual” in the Whitehouse. The parties on all sides of the road have spoken quite clearly that there needs to be a substantial change in how we represent ourselves to the rest of the world.

I would not discount a “few people” as to not being able to make a change though. The articles now number a couple of dozen that have been written about the MySpaceGate incident and people are adding to our site quicker than I thought. There are over 1800 on Joes personal page that were simpatico with him and thought he got the raw end of the deal and found out about it before the page was deleted. The DtRTB site is up to about 600. I know that may seem small compared to the current total on the now official Barack Obama page; but I like to say, “you may see a number in total but that does not mean it’s the total number.” I believe there are many individuals waiting for Barack to still put this issue to rest one way or another. The number of friends that you quoted is correct and is about 4K more than the Hillary Clinton site, but was about 120K more than her pre-takeover.

In today’s world of Internet technology with archiving that takes milliseconds to bring up on Google and the popularity of You Tube, I believe it’s not wise to make any such negative moves. They are after all, just a click away. I don’t think anyone has the power to bury it deep enough once it hits the Internet community. Bad publicity now is bad publicity later; we’ve seen that used in that last election process.

The ability to control ones message is important and I believe from what I know of this incident, that was a non-issue since TeamObama was in communication with Joe Anthony via email and telephone and were able have any changes made that they felt were needed. I will be working on a timeline as to what took place and when, for people to have a better visual understanding of the incident. I have requested information many times to no avail from TeamObama as you also experienced. I will send it to the moderator of the DtRTB page for him to post if he chooses to. I won’t take up anymore of your time or space and thank you for the original article. Feel free to drop by in the future and get a feel for the current climate.