Obama's MySpace Drama

fistfullast33l writes "TechPresident, which is covering the use of technology by Presidential Campaigns for 2008, has a very interesting article on how Obama's MySpace page is currently the subject of an underground battle for control by the campaign itself and the volunteer who created it in 2004. Joseph Anthony worked with the campaign initially and grew the site to include over 160,000 unsolicited friends that the campaign could use to reach out to. It currently is the main Obama page in the Impact Channel on MySpace. However, as Obama's campaign became more centralized and formal, the decision was made to attempt to acquire control of the site from Anthony. They asked him for a price, which he offered up as $49,000 plus part of the $10,000 fee paid to MySpace for the Impact Channel. Obama balked at the price, and decided to start afresh rather than pay the money. The fight broke out into the open when Anthony posted a response on his blog to rumors that the campaign was spreading regarding him wanting to cash out. MyDD has more."

Comments

$19 Million on Hand ...

[eldavojohn]

So, Obama has $19 million on hand from fund raising and donations and he can't drop a year's salary to this guy for the work he's done maintaining a MySpace site? And if the guy invested $10k of his own money on good faith that it would help the campaign ... I'm shocked that he's not asking for more. I mean, isn't that chump change to Obama? And doesn't Obama have to dispose of that money before the election otherwise it's gotta go to charity (I'm not a politician, I forget the rules of soft money).

I'm getting the feeling that I'm not hearing the whole story here. Nobody's doing anything wrong though, this is clear cut capitalism. The man has the only supply for the product ... Obama's campaign managers didn't like it so decided to make their own. Interesting drama but not really news.

Not Scum

[fistfullast33l]

Are you kidding me? He's not charging $49k to give the name back - he started the site as a supporter of Obama 2 freakin years ago, not knowing that Obama would run for president. Now, the campaign wants to take control of his profile page and they asked him to come up with a rough sum rather than hire him as a campaign contributer.

This is a lot like Valve and the mods that came out of Half Life. Valve in that case hired the Counterstrike and DoD teams and gave them jobs. Obama decided they didn't want to do that and instead asked the guy to come up with a sum of money. As MyDD points out, it's roughly 32 cents per friend. That's not too shabby considering how much money they throw away on consultants. And it's only a one time payment. For a campaign that just raised $26 million, to balk at $50,000 is pretty crazy in my opinion.

The true Obana makes a showing

[iminplaya]

Let this be a lesson. These people are no better than the ones they want to replace. I know I'm talking to the hand, But it has to be said. You have a choice. Make it a good one. If you all want change, then you have to bring it about. The standard bearers of the status quo won't do it for you.

Re:Obama's Space Drama

[Red Flayer]

Couldn't Obama or his people send in the lawyers and ask the guy to take down the site or remove references on the guys site to being the official page?

Actually, Anthony's page specifically states that it's NOT the official page.

And if his claims that it wasn't about money aren't true, then where are the specific amounts of money coming from?

The Obama campaign solicited a figure from him.

It's not a cut-and-dried case of squatting -- Anthony had actually worked with the campaign on the profile. The campaign had password access, so that they could maintain some kind of control over the content just-in-case.

It isn't about money, IMO. This guy built a significant amount of grassroots support for Obama, then found out that presidential politics is big business, and there's no room for the little guy. How would you feel if a 2.5 year labor of love was pulled out from underneath you? The campaign told him to make an offer... he did, based upon an approximated value of the time he spent on the profile this year. They scoffed, and went around him.

I don't blame the creator of the profile. I don't blame the Obama campaign, either -- centralized control is necessary for presidential campaigns today.

It's politics, sometimes people don't get what they want and feelings get hurt. Same as it ever was, same as it ever will be.

Re:What did you expect?

[Logger]

Short-sighted is to give a guy who probably has no idea what his effort was worth 24 hours to come up with a price, and then not at least try to negotiate. He shoots in the dark a $50k price. For a year of work that has been that effective as it has, that's a bargain compared to how much ineffective money is spent on political TV ads.

Then instead of providing a counter offer, they simply accuse him of profitering and proceed to hijack the site from him. That is short sited anyway you look at. They are doing this because they thought he's an individual nobody. What could he possibly do to retaliate (read "typical big guy squish little guy think"). And now they are getting bad press because of it (read "short-sighted"). He's already sustained his loss (MySpace page was hijacked) which won't change his life really. They are only now going to begin to discover the loss to there credibility, which could potentially be very damaging. (Well, for the few people that are naive enough to give any credibitlity to any candidate.)

Re:Scumbags

[gurps_npc]

You did not read the article at all did you?

This is some guys personal web site, that favored Obama. He set it up YEARS before Obama was announced he was in the presidential race.

Did he ask for money? NO.

This was his baby, his project to help Obama.

Then some low level staffer says "HEY, I like your idea, only I want to run it."

He responds: "No thank you, this mine. Go make your own".

Low level greedy staffer responds "I am one laze SOB. I don't want to do the work, I just want the credit. How much to buy your work?"

Honest, hard working guy responds "Well, if the Obama campaing really wants my personal Pro Obama web site, I could sell it to you. It cost me $10 grand in outright cash, and more than 3 years worth of work. If you really don't want me to run my web site anymore, and want to run it yourself, I'll give it to you for a measily 50 grand."

Read the article first, instead of getting all huffy about who did what.

Re:Obama's Space Drama

[popejeremy]

Except your analogy is flawed because the "motorcycle" in question, a myspace.com profile, never belonged to this guy in the first place.

Everything on myspace.com belongs to NewsCorp, and they say so very openly. Taking the 30 seconds to register a username on myspace doesn't give you ownership of the page that is generated with that username in it anymore than registering a username on slashdot.org gives you ownership of slashdot.org.

Myspace.com has an established history of taking usernames that are the same as celebrity names and simply handing them over to the celebrities. The issue is even in their TOS.

Obama's campaign didn't steal anything here. It belonged to myspace.com all along, and myspace.com did what they did in every other case where similar thing happened. They took the famous name and gave it to the person who is actually named that. This dude just made the mistake of believing that his little piece of myspace.com was actually his, when it never was to begin with.

Why make up data when you can find statistics?

[Trillian_1138]

It's a freaking myspace page. Of his 160,000 "friends," how many are over 18? Perhaps 25%? Of those 40,000, how many are registered? Even a quarter of those? I doubt it. Maybe an eighth. So of those 5,000, how many actually care enough to vote? Probably half.

Well, doing a quick Google search on 'myspace demographics' shows conflicting information. Some pages say that over 75% of the MySpace population is over 18 [1]. Meanwhile, another site is saying over half of MySpace is over thirty five [2]. Even pulling numbers out of my ass (much like you did) and assuming that a significant portion of of the people who show up as over 18 are lying, it still looks like much more than 25% of the "friends" from this page are over 18.

Likewise, looking at US census info shows just about 50% of 18-24 year olds were registered for to vote by November 2004 while around 40% actually voted [3].

So lets do some math with this new data. You said of the 160,000 friends this page had, only around 2500 will actually vote. Of the 160,000 around 120,000 (160,000*.75) are over 18. Of those, the national turnout (again, the US Census) was at around 58% in 2004. 58% of 120,000 is just under 70,000 people who, statistically, will probably vote. At the asking price of $49,000 for the MySpace page, that's less than a dollar a voter - a good buy for any politician.

But lets go a step further and look at just the 18-24 demographic (from links 1 and 2 somewhere around 18% of MySpace). So around 29,000 friends of the 160,000 are 18-24, of which around 40% will actually vote. So over 10,000 friends age 18-24 who will actually vote. That's still only a couple dollars per voter, not bad for a campaign, and ignores all the other voters who are over 24.

Now, I know, I've made a lot of assumptions doing this back-of-the-envelope math: all the data (both about MySpace and about US voters) is accurate, all the MySpace users are in the United States, and trends will continue like they did in the 2004 election. But for all the assumptions that my estimates are high, you could make an equal argument that they're low. That is, you could argue that people registered as friends of Obama are more likely to vote than the population as a whole.

My point is, your original guess (about 2500 who are 18+ and will actually vote out of the original 160,000 friends) seems to be off by 65,000 voters (not registered voters, but people who will vote). In fact, there are more voters out of those 160,000 who are 18-24 than your original guess for all people over the age of 18.

Feel free to correct my math or my assumptions. I had fun doing this, but would someone else come along and correct me than let something incorrect stand.
-Trillian

[1] http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=11967
[2] http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=10 19
[3] http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/votin g/cps2004.html Look at table 11, Reported Voting and Registration, by Marital Status, Age, and Sex: November 2004.

Re:Flamebait? Come on

[spun]

Poor oppressed white males. So sad how little respect we get, isn't it? Why won't those mean old Democrats pander to us?

I need to state for the record that, Democrat though I may be, I have no problem with real conservatives. That is, those who advocate a smaller Federal government, states rights, and fiscal responsibility. That is not what the current Republican party stands for. They stand for anything that benefits big corporations, the religious right, and borrow and spend lunacy.

It must suck being a Republican these days and feeling as though you have to defend the indefensible. I almost feel sorry for you.