WASHINGTON (AP) – Is MySpace always mine or can it belong to someone else? At the cost of losing 160,000 friends, Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has taken over control of the MySpace page listed under his name on the popular social networking site.
For the past two and a half years, the page has been run by an Obama supporter from Los Angeles named Joe Anthony. At first, that arrangement was fine with the Obama team, which worked with Anthony on the content and even had the password to make changes themselves.

But as the site exploded in popularity in recent months, the campaign became concerned about an outsider having control of the content and responses going out under Obama’s name and told Anthony they wanted him to turn it over.

In this new frontier of online campaigning, it’s hard to determine the value of 160,000 MySpace friends—about four times what any other official campaign MySpace page has amassed. But the Obama campaign decided they wouldn’t pay $39,000, which is what Anthony said he proposed for his extensive work on the site, plus some additional fees up to $10,000.

MySpace reluctantly stepped in to settle the dispute and decided that Obama should have the rights to control http://www.myspace.com/barackobama as of Monday night, while Anthony had the right to take the contact information for all the friends who signed up while he was in control. That includes the right to tell them exactly how he feels about the Obama campaign.

Anthony referred The Associated Press to his MySpace blog, where he has written that he is heartbroken that the Obama campaign was “bullying” him out of the page he built. He said the candidate has lost his vote.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is trying to rebuild his friends network from scratch and was up to more than 17,000 by midday Wednesday. “We support the MySpace community, and look forward to building our relationship,” said campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Link

Way to use and abuse your supporters Obama, and good way to lose a vote too.

The former supporter of Obama has moved to another Myspace page after essentially having his Myspace page stolen from him (myspace gave it to Obama camp) and explains what happened behind the scenes:

5.01.01 What happened to the Obama profile?
Current mood: disappointed

Friends,

Many of you are probably wondering what happened to the Obama profile. The campaign, with the help of Myspace, have seized control of the profile without my consent, and are using it to refer traffic to a new profile they created. I have been blocked from having access to the profile. The campaign will probably have a different perspective on the events leading up to this, but until my personal profile is deleted, I’m going to take a stand on this. I believe what they did is just wrong, and someone should say something.

Here is an email I sent to Micah at techpresident.com. Any questions, let me know:

Thanks Micah,

I want to be careful about this, but also I think it’s unfair that they deleted this community when they could have left it up as an unofficial fan site as it has been for the last two and a half years. The campaign may say that this was my decision, and this is not true.

I did want to be paid, if we were to continue working together . This was not an attempt to use this profile for commercial purposes. This was an attempt to keep working my ass off on this profile, for Barack Obama, and for the enormous community of supporters on Myspace.

Since January, as you may know, and as many in the Myspace community know, I’ve been working on the page around the clock. I started this profile in November of 2004 and it grew steadily since then. In January and February the media started to notice, and I began to work even harder because I reallized what an impact the Myspace could really have.

People were actually registering to vote, making contributions, asking questions, putting banners on their pages, etc. I know this because I constantly received emails about this, and I replied to every single one to thank them or point them in the right direction if they needed more information.

The campaign got involved in February and although at first it was very exciting, it quickly became clear that they just had no interest in me or my involvement. They only wanted to take control of the profile and get on with it. I bit the bullet for a while and kept working for the good of the campaign, but they quickly went from passive aggressive, to aggressive, and then eventually just rotten and dishonest.

For the past few weeks, the campaign decided it would be better if they just took control of the profile and we decided to try to come to some agreement. By this time, I didn’t have quite as much respect for the campaign guys, and frankly felt like I was just being used. They knew about this profile the entire time, and really just waited until it got enough media coverage and friends request so they could step in and bully me out of it.

The last few weeks were just insane. They kept scheduling phone conferences with me, I would wake up early that day after barely sleeping the night before, I’d take time off work, etc. and each after another would be postponed at the last minute. This went on for weeks.

It got to the point where I didn’t feel comfortable turning the profile over to the campaign unless they paid for it. This was largely symbolic. The same campaign that inspired me to work so hard to build this community, the same campaign whose underlying message stresses “the power of the individual to have an impact on politics”, was constantly downplaying my role in this, bullying me, and a couple of other things that were just rotten and dishonest (specifically in connection with Myspace, and the campaign quashing a recent NPR interview about the profile).

In a conversation with Chris from the campaign last week or the week before, Chris suggested a one-time fee to transfer over the profile to them and that they discussed this with Myspace and they were agreeable with any arrangement we could work out. He did not suggest how much, or what sort of a fee. He did say that he needed it by the next morning so we scheduled another meeting and I stayed up all night working on a proposal that I thought would be fair to everyone. This was a positive conversation and he seemed sincere enough.

That meeting finally happened yesterday. It was clear at that time that there was no “one-time fee”. I felt like it was a bit of a setup so that they could have a reason to take the profile without my consent.

I was accused of using this profile for commercial purposes. I was threatened that I would be responsible if the profile was deleted (they even followed up via email to be sure I knew it was my fault!) The conversation really was about them taking control of the profile. There was no counter offer, or anything to suggest that they had any intention of paying me anything at all.

At this point there was no way I would turn this community over to them and would rather keep it as an unofficial site and keep doing what I’ve been doing. I expressed this, and they said that if I did not turn the profile over to them immediately, they would delete it and all of my hard work would go to waste. They reiterated this several times, and repeated “You are the one making the decision to kill this profile”. In fact, I responded each time, that I have no plans to delete this profile, and that decision would be between them and Myspace. (I even added that he sounded like Bush telling congress/senate it was their decision not to fund the troops. How hypocritical is this!)

Finally, Chris from the campaign emailed me, indicating that Myspace needed my consent to give them access to the profile. I replied that Mypace did not have my consent to grant access to the profile to anyone.

An hour or so later, I was blocked from the profile and the content was altered to redirect traffic to the new, “Official” profile. Myspace has in fact granted access to the profile without my permission.

This was not about money and I don’t believe that one person who has interacted with me via the Obama profile over the past couple of years would be able to say that my efforts were anything but sincere. This was about holding a campaign to their message, about acknowledging my work, and taking this community seriously.

I think I did the right thing. I wanted a fair outcome for everyone, but unfortunately that’s not what happened. In fact, I think this was enormously offensive to both me and the Myspace community. I could understand Myspace/Newscorp doing this, but didn’t think Obama’s campaign could have the audacity to do such a thing.

Apparently the message here is, as an individual, if you have too big of an impact, you’re just a liability.

This is how Obama lost my vote, and one of his strongest supporters.

Sincerely,

-Joe Anthony

p.s. Like I said, I’m passionate about this right now. All this work, all this progress is down the drain, and I’m absolutely heart-broken.

Link

This must be the sticking up for the little guy they always talk about.

If it doesn’t suit their agenda they arrange for the owner to lose all his rights and they take over.

Obama, no so shining anymore…..

President Powers Boothe is great. When he told Tom Lennox that he “felt better now” that was classic.

And what happened to his Dad?

Then the left really could say that “24″ is a liberal show

Weird that the previews didn’t show Chloe. Will we see her again before the season ends, I wonder.

Teri Bauer – dead
Nina Myers – dead
Kate Warner – dumped
Audrey Raines – shell-shocked