BarackSpace: What's Next For Joe Anthony? [UPDATE]

The dust is starting to settle on Obama's MySpace Mess. For those people who imagined that Joe Anthony might turn to the courts and sue the Obama campaign for taking control of a community space that he spent two-and-a-half years and thousands of hours nurturing, that move is fortunately for all concerned not in the cards.

Instead, Anthony is pondering donating the url over to a non-profit group, or trying to continue working with the community gathered around the site to make it into a kind of clearinghouse or forum on the presidential candidates in general. He writes on his blog,

"I've decided that this situation, at this point, will not change my personal support for Barack Obama. What happened was just wrong, no doubt about it, but I'm willing to forgive it and look forward. I will always stand for the things I believe in, but I also don't hold grudges."

He says he's also emailed the Obama campaign asking them to correct "some inaccuracies" in new media director Joe Rospars' blog post about the controversy, and "we both agree that we want a positive outcome."

Presumably this puts to rest the thinking that all Anthony wanted was a "big payday" out of his involvement with Obama. Personally, I find his notion of donating his myspace url to a non-profit group intriguing, though it's hard to who could actually make good use of something this sui generis.

Meanwhile, the controversy over who did what to whom continues to swirl as we all pick over the details of this story. MTV has a detailed interview with Anthony that adds more texture to how the discussions between him and the campaign developed and broke down. Clearly one turning point in the breakdown between the two sides happened when MySpace started featuring pictures of the candidates on its "Cool New Person" box on the home page; Anthony apparently was blind-sided by how much work that created and he blames the Obama campaign for that, while no doubt the explosive increase in friends the "Cool New Person" box generated caused the Obama team to get even more worried about Anthony's ability to manage the site in real-time. Anthony told MTV, "...our relationship started to go south because of it — namely because they did this [deal] with MySpace without even telling me or warning me. And even when I asked them about it they weren't too straightforward with me."

Narratives diverge here, with Anthony saying all he did was email the campaign asking to be paid and then getting asked to send a proposal for a one-time fee, and Rospars saying he cut off password access and then "subsequently" (a word that is of course formally accurate but can hide a lot) sent an itemized financial proposal. You already know what I think of that divergence; we'll see if it gets resolved in the current exchange of emails between the two sides.

Jerome Armstrong offers some useful contextualizing over at MyDD, where, as usual, the debate has been the most informative of any I've found on the web (other than this modest site, wink, wink).

UPDATE:

I got an email a short while ago from Joe Anthony responding to some questions I put to him regarding whether the Obama campaign was going to make any corrections to their blog post. Here's what he wrote:

At this point, we've really made zero progress. I emailed to Rospars a list of a few inaccuracies in his blog. There were paragraphs that left out key information, which as a result portrays me in a very negative light. This is why some people are sending me hate mail, accusing me of trying to extort the campaign. (Although I've received over 1,000 emails supporting me on my personal profile, and you can see all the positive comments from people who were there with me for the past two and half years, and know that what the campaign is saying isn't true).

So I sent this email, we spoke on the phone and made no progress. We went over each item, one by one, and I believe Joe Rospars is a straight-shooter as you mentioned, but it sounded like he just avoided a straight answer and wouldn't necessarily disagree but wouldn't change anything either.

Yesterday, I noticed they were approving some positive comments about me on the official profile. I emailed Chris, Scott and Joe to thank them.

I also sent a follow up email about the blog, but no real response (except for thanking me for emailing them, agreeing to want a positive outcome).

I'm just frustrated and disappointed with these guys, but I need to move on. I spent over two years working my ass off to try to motivate and inform tens of thousands of supporters for them, and even after what they did to me, and the fact that they're still leaving this BS blog on their site, I'm still willing to forgive and continue my support for Obama.

The fact that they ended up stealing the profile (whether it was their or Myspace's fault, I blame both), and the way they've talked about me and the profile in their blog, absolutely assures me that I made the right decision in not giving the profile to them for free. Their only objective was to acquire the profile and they just didn't appreciate what it took to make it the biggest community of supporters on Myspace.

In our phone conversation about the blog on Wednesday, Joe Rospars repeatedly said that they were working to give the profile back to me, they're going to work with Myspace to speed it up, but this really had nothing to do with the campaign. I had already spoken with Myspace and they agreed to do this, and I understand that turning the profile back to me wasn't even the campaign's decision. Still, he responded with this to almost every point I tried to make about the blog, whether on topic or not, as if turning the profile back to me made everything ok.

I believe they would never have given the profile back to me if I wouldn't have written you that email and your article wasn't published. Still, I think that was Myspace's decision.

I'm just not a politician and they don't need to spin this to protect themselves. Most people agree that what they did was just unethical. They should apologize, and correct their blog, but who really cares. It's already in the media, and what they did is done.

I just have to move on from this.