Barack Obama “steals” MySpace page from Silverlake man

May 2, 2007 at 3:24 pm in Politics

Picture%2020.png In what could be the first major stumble in Barack Obama’s path to the White House, a fan MySpace profile set up in his name has been taken from the man who created it without compensation.

Joe Anthony, a Silverlake man, set up an Obama MySpace page in November of 2004 after being impressed with the Chicago Senator’s keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. As the site gained popularity, the campaign team for Obama asked to become involved in the page, and Anthony agreed, even giving them the password to access the page to make changes as needed.

In March, the number of “friends” on the profile boomed from 100,000 to 140,000, and the maintainence of the page turned into a full time effort for Anthony, and as a result he asked for some sort of compensation, suggesting $49,000.

According to Anthony, there was no counter offer. And over the past few days MySpace cut off his access to the Obama page, turning it over to Obama’s campaign staff who plan to shut it down, and are trying to get people to sign up for a new “official” Barack Obama page. On Joe Anthony’s personal MySpace page are a number of blog postings reflecting his side of the story.

This is a shame on a two fronts: Mainly, the original Barack Obama page lists 159, 528 friends – higher than any other presidential candidate with a MySpace presence, while the new “official” page currently only has 19,107 friends. Getting everyone to learn about the new page is going to be a challenge – effectively starting from scratch. I’m a friend of the original page, and the only reason I heard there was a new page is because I read about this situation on Breitbart.com in a story headlined “Obama Takes Over MySpace Page”.

Which brings up the second reason: Most people who hear about the new page will hear the story of how the Obama campaign effectively ripped off one of it’s biggest supporters. In many people’s view, the Obama campaign could have created their own official profile, but instead they took advantage of a fan’s work.

6 Comments »

frazgo

Let the homogenization of yet another candidate to make it acceptable to the masses.
lee

So a fan starts a page, it grows, he allows the campaign to jump in to help WITHOUT first negotiating a financial agreement of some kind with them first — and he suddenly decides he should get paid!? Uh no. That’s just stupid on his part.

Taking over the page? Not smart on the campaign’s part — and I’m not sure how MySpace gets away with that.

But the originator hass zero grounds to demand money for a page he voluntarily set up.
http://darleeneisms.la darleene

It seems kind of silly to go to all that effort of taking over a supporter’s page, then shutting it down and trying to get all the friends to be friends of the new “official” page.
Kevin!

I believe there’s Campaign Finance restrictions that may be responsible.

From Obama’s point of view, hundreds of thousands of his supporters are dependent on some guy he doesn’t know who is suddenly asking for large sums of money. Who could also start mouthing off.
ruth666

I’d love to comment – but first I need 49 THOUSAND DOLLARS.

Ninja PLEASE.
http://www.myspace/koevents Kristin

The page is intellectual property of Joe Anthony and has become a major real resource in diseminating campaign issues and agendas of OBAMA. For me a long time subscriber of his blogs and works he was my trusted resource. Joe has maintained professional integrity and my new unsung hero for freedom of speech regardless of chosen medium. Obama violated my rights as a subscriber.

Barack Obama “steals” MySpace page from Silverlake man

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