Obama's MySpace Mess: Enter the Shovel Brigade

It's been quite a day out here on the internets, with the blogosphere buzzing over our story yesterday of how Obama volunteer Joe Anthony lost control of his MySpace Obama page to the pros at the Obama campaign. And now it looks like we're going to have another day to chew over the story, for the candidate himself and the campaign's internet director have waded into the fray.

A little while ago, just before Obama internet director put up a long post explaining his version of the events surrounding Anthony's MySpace adventure, Senator Obama personally called Anthony at home.

Anthony blogs about it on his personal MySpace page, and he told me that he took the called with "mixed feelings." "This is the guy who inspired me to do this. But I don't support what his campaign is doing right now," he told me.

Anthony says he doesn't remember word-for-word what Obama said, but paraphrased as best he could. "He said he really appreciates the work I've done. We both agreed that this is new to everyone but there's a lot to be learned. I don't think he actually apologized. He said he stood by his campaign and everything. He was very nice. Exactly what anybody would expect."

As for Joe Rospars lengthy post on "Our MySpace Experiment," you can read the whole thing for yourself. Most of it tracks with my own reporting on how the relationship between Anthony and the Obama new media team started out, all the way up through their initial discussions with him about possibly coming on board and working out an understanding for shared management of the site.

But what strikes me as odd about it is Rospars' claim that Anthony's "list of itemized financial requests" came unbidden, after the workload on the page exploded and Anthony cut off the campaign's password access to the site. Rospars would have you believe that Anthony was in effect extorting the campaign by witholding access, but my notes of my conversations with Obama staff, which were "on background" make clear that Anthony only produced that proposal (the $39,000 plus the $10,000 for possible advertising spending by the campaign on MySpace) at the request of Chris Hughes.

I should add here that I know Rospars a little and based on our past conversations and his general reputation among politech folks, he's a straight shooter. I don't think he's saying anything other than what he believes were the actual version of events. But what I don't know is whether Rospars was personally involved in all the details of the relationship with Anthony, or what he's written here reflects what others who were more directly involved are feeding him.

It's possible that we will soon see a clarification of this issue, since Anthony tells me that Rospars offered to let him post something on the campaign blog, or at least send in some kind of correction or clarification. "I'm going to call him or email him the things I don't agree with," Anthony told me, "and at least give him the possibility to correct that before I blog about. I'm still somewhat an Obama supporter," he concluded.

My bottom line? I think the Obama campaign really fumbled this relationship, and its new media team is dealing with the aftermath of their own mistakes. As for the people who have been speculating in comment threads everywhere that somehow Anthony was just a cyber-squatter, I think it's quite clear that he didn't spend two-and-a-half years tending a hyperactive fan page on what originally was a social networking site focused on indie bands in order to make a buck. People who imagine that his work on his Obama MySpace page didn't take much time or amount to anything of value--even before the campaign partnered with MySpace to point more traffic to it--are just plain naive. Sure, Anthony's $39,000 proposal seems high, but the Obama campaign didn't even try to negotiate him down to something more reasonable. The pros were too focused on control, too worried that something could go wrong, and too arrogant about their own ability to replicate Anthony's work without cost to the campaign. Now they're paying the price.