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by Obie Fernandez.
Original Post: Obama Politics 2.0 Debacle?
Feed Title: Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?)
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In November 2004, Joe Anthony, a paralegal living in Los Angeles, started a unofficial fan page for then-newly-elected Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) on MySpace.com. Inspired by Obama's keynote address at that summer's Democratic convention, Anthony had never been politically active before. "I was just blown away," he told me. He put time into the site every day, answering emails from people wanting to "friend" the page, pointing them to voter registration information, and, once Obama threw his hat into the ring, telling them where to find out more detailed positions taken by the candidate.
Until very recently, it was one of the most active netroots sites supporting the Obama campaign, and Joe put a lot of effort and heart into maintaining it. Along the way his gradual involvement with the official campaign staff turned the whole thing into a clusterfuck -- a clear example of how traditional organizational management DOES NOT UNDERSTAND the Web 2.0 dynamic. The official campaign team, certainly without Obama's direct knowledge or consent, grew increasingly uncomfortable with having such a large community outside their direct control. The culmination? The campaign recently wrested control of the MySpace profile from Joe in an ugly fashion.
The MySpace version of the story:
We are firmly committed to empowering our users and protecting their rights. The situation with Senator Obama's profile became an unfortunate instance where a user gave a campaign functional control of a profile and the relationship between the two broke down. We felt under the circumstances that Senator Obama had the right to the URL containing his name and to the official campaign content that was provided, but that the user should retain the basic elements of the profile, including the friends who had been accumulated. Now that each Presidential candidate controls his/her own MySpace page, we don't expect this to be a problem again.
As a Barack Obama supporter myself, I'm taken aback by this incident, both in principle and for practical reasons. I can't in good conscience continue to support Obama for president unless there is some proof that he understands why the situation was a screwup. As one of the commenter's on Joe's blog stated it:
Beyond that, this is also an excellent litmus test for Senator Obama to show everyone that he really is different. That he will not try to sweep his staff's screw-ups under the rug, and pretend they didn't happen. That he will hold his people accountable for their actions. That he will take responsibility for his, and his staff's, actions -- and he will do what is necessary to fix whatever mess they (or he) have made. That he really is worthy of being trusted with the role of Leader of the Free World. Or ... not.
To me, the whole point of Obama as president is that he'll be different than those that have come before. That he actually cares about real people. That he respects our dreams and ambitions, not just those of the rich and powerful. I hope I'm not being stupidly naive in my optimism.
Barack called Joe personally but it wasn't clear that there was an apology or resolution.
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