Obama's MySpace Drama
TechPresident, which is covering the use of technology by Presidential Campaigns for 2008, has an interesting article on how [a href="http://www.techpresident.com/node/301"]Obama's MySpace page[/a] is currently the subject of an underground battle for control by the campaign itself and the volunteer who originally 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 [a href="http://www.myspace.com/barackobama"]main Obama page[/a] in the [a href="http://impact.myspace.com/"]Impact Channel[/a] 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 [a href="http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=159248288&blogID=259712152&Mytoken=8738375F-A57E-4AB4-900496ABAA3F3FF11236719"]posted a response[/a] on his blog to rumors that the campaign was spreading regarding him wanting to cash out. [a href="http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/2/93621/10103"]MyDD has more.[/a]