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Friends,
I'm continuing to receive a steady stream of emails from you all, and the vast majority are supportive. However, there are a few that haven't heard the whole story and unfortunately are jumping to conclusions.
I keep getting requests from the media asking me to clarify certain contradictions in the campaign's official blog on my.barackobama.com, so I'm just going to go ahead and comment on it here.
At this point, what's done is done, and the only point of this is to learn from the mistakes made in this situation, and move on to more positive things.
Below is a copy of Joe Rospars' blog from my.barackobama.com, along with my comments in bold where key facts were either left out, or are simply misleading.
-Joe Anthony
NOTE: I have discussed this with Rospars, and although he didn't disagree, he refused to make any changes.
By Joe Rospars - May 2nd, 2007 at 7:11 pm EDT
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/rospars
There have been a lot of questions and comments in this community related to our MySpace profile, and so I wanted to come by and clarify how we got here and answer questions.
Our campaign started quickly. People around here say that this has been like building an airplane in mid-air, having already taken off. This is especially true of the New Media operation. While the campaign in general is going from zero to sixty, our team is at the same time charged with exploring the new ways we can build relationships between Barack and his supporters, and foster relationships among supporters themselves.
When it came to MySpace, we decided to take a leap. We decided to make the attempt to combine the organic support and community-building of a grassroots effort with the official campaign outreach efforts.
In many ways this mirrors what has happened on the campaign's own web site. On February 10th, the day Barack announced his candidacy in Springfield, we launched My.BarackObama.com has an unprecedented public utility for supporters.
Even on the campaign's own web site, the organizing efforts and community-building by the grassroots has outpaced the growth of the traditional campaign infrastructure. On the site, over 11,500 people have created their own blogs about everything from their issue priorities to their personal experience campaigning locally. Thousands of events have been planned using the events tool (social events, planning meetings, small fundraisers), and tens of thousands of people have RSVPed to these grassroots-driven gatherings.
And over 5,000 grassroots volunteer groups have been founded -- in many states, these groups will be the only organizational presence the campaign has. Even in the early states, staff organizers are hitting ground in places where volunteer groups have already been meeting and organizing. One of the first orders of business for new staff on the ground is getting to know the grassroots who have already started building the movement.
When it comes to MySpace, I'm not sure if a campaign of this size has ever teamed-up with a grassroots volunteer on this scale, but we wanted to give it a try.
Joe Anthony's great work was building community at the www.myspace.com/barackobama address, and so we contacted him.
At that point, the profile had about 40,000 friends, and to our delight, Joe agreed to work with us. Indeed, he seemed relieved to have some help -- he gave us the password, and we began to exchange content, work together, and continue growing this community from the ground-up. We created images that he (and others online) could post, and began going through the process of preparing the profile to be "official" by combing through the content and establishing a plan to ensure that everyone who tried to contact the campaign through the profile received an answer. (People wrote messages and comments in huge numbers, virtually all addressed to Barack or the campaign -- "Will you come speak at my graduation?", "Where do you stand on issue X?", "How can I help locally?", etc.)
Comments on the page were addressed to Barack Obama, because this was a profile in support of Obama, as were many other Obama fan-sites on Myspace. However, I kept a presence as the "moderator" and manager of this profile to avoid this confusion, and most people understood that. As new friends joined the community, some would send emails asking "Is this really you Obama", but most quickly caught on. At all times, there was a disclaimer on the page which read "This profile is not managed or endorsed by Senator Barack Obama".
The vast majority of all emails were addressed to me, Joe, as the moderator (ex. "Dear Joe, when is Obama coming to Iowa?") and I would refer them to the official website, www.barackobama.com if that info. wasn't already posted on the profile. This was always a community for Obama supporters, by an Obama supporter. I do not believe any person on that friends list, that participated in the community, would say otherwise.
In addition, the campaign really has no way of knowing what the messages said, because they only had access to the page for a very short time. With that in mind, I don't understand why they claim this in their blog.
We started talking to Joe about formalizing the arrangement, preserving his work building the community, and talking through how to preserve his involvement in the direction and development of the profile.
For a time, both the campaign and Joe had mutual access. Soon after, MySpace launched a promotional campaign to direct traffic to the official candidate pages. The campaign allowed MySpace to promote this unofficial profile because, strictly speaking, there was no official presence. And so MySpace began featuring the profile in candidate promotions -- and the friends and workload grew.
We knew Joe had a full-time job already, and, early on, we floated the idea of moving to Chicago to work for us full-time (potential staffers were moving to Chicago and join the team at that time, and there were openings). I totally agree when Chris Bowers says that the New Media/online outreach efforts of campaigns should be a priority -- and we have built an operation here in Chicago and in the early states that reflects that posture.
Chris Hughes did indicate that there were "limited staff positions available in Chicago and I could send them my resume". At this point, although I would've loved to work directly for the campaign, I was happy to continue working on the profile as I had been, and it was more of a priority to maintain my involvement in the page and not let it become like one of the other Candidates profiles. I never sent them a resume, and instead focused on building the page and finding new ways to engage the community.
There was something special happening in this Myspace community, and I did not want to see it turn into a passive source of information run by the campaign. They already had an official website (www.barackobama.com) for that, which I directed a great deal of traffic to.
But Joe seemed to prefer to volunteer part-time from the outside with the campaign to continue building the community. He said he was honored to help out, and we were honored to work with him. We worked through the complications that arose: letting Joe know that he shouldn't work on the site from work, educated him about the rules governing campaign promotion of official Senate material, etc. Joe was right with us, and things continued down the path towards making this unofficial community into an official space run with help from volunteers.
This is true, and I was honored to work with the campaign. There was some question about making this unofficial page an official one. I suggested at one point keeping it an unofficial page endorsed by the campaign and linking to it via the campaign's official website. This was a difficult and complicated situation, and I thought carefully about what would be best for the campaign and community.
As we progressed, we began to work-up paperwork that would codify this arrangement -- ensuring that the campaign would have full access (what if someone put up an obscene comment during the day while Joe was at work?), and assuming the liability burden (legally, ethically, and politically) for what happened on the site.
This is about the time I began to restrict access to the profile, and stopped providing the password to the campaign. I agreed that we should have some agreement before moving forward, and money was not an issue at this point. This was a liability issue if this were to be an official profile, not a money issue.
Further, after a closer examination of the Myspace terms of use at that time, I learned that Myspace prohibits allowing access to any user other than the creator of the page. For this reason, and for security purposes mentioned above, I decided I should cease from allowing the campaign access to the profile until we had a formal agreement (and Myspace's consent).
I did however continue to work with the campaign, and implemented every one of their suggestions for the profile. Although they did not have access to the profile for that period, they would call or email me and I would make any changes, post a bulletin or blog, or whatever they asked me to do, all on very short notice.
At the same time, though, the community had skyrocketed. Nobody expected the grassroots to respond this campaign in such large numbers the way they have, and the rapid growth of the MySpace profile once the MySpace Impact Channel began promoting the various candidates is yet another example of the appeal of Barack. We were well over 100,000 friends, and the burden of administering such a profile became immense.
Unfortunately, at that point, Joe changed the password on the profile, and didn't give us the new one, like he had done in the past. This changed the previous dynamic, and we could no longer access the profile at a moment's notice if need be. We asked Joe what was needed to restore access, and subsequently we received the list of itemized financial requests that have been discussed elsewhere.
This is misleading, and why some have gone as far to accuse me of attempting to extort the campaign.
See my previous comment. This not why I stopped providing the password. The itemized financial requests will be discussed further below.
This made us uncomfortable. Every day, MySpace was driving tens of thousands of people to the page on the premise that this was more or less our "official" presence -- yet we had no access to the content on the page, and no ability to be responsive to the thousands of messages coming in from supporters seeking information or action from the campaign.
They did have access to the page, through me. As I mentioned, once the campaign became involved in March of 2007, I implemented any and all of the campaign's suggestions, even though they did not have direct access to the profile. I cooperated with them until the very end.
Also, at all times, an 'away message' was set on the page so that users would be encouraged to contact the campaign directly via their official website. In that away message users were referred to the official site for answers to their questions not included on the Myspace profile. For suggestions regarding the Myspace profile specifically I included my email address associated with the page. I received many emails over the years, and responded to all of them, redirected them to the appropriate source, and signed off as "Joe, moderator". This was an effective system and I implemented many user suggestions, whether it be a new photo, new video, a bulletin about an event I should post, etc.
I also received hundreds, maybe even thousands of emails over the years from people thanking me for working so hard on the page. Many indicated that they didn't know much about Barack Obama prior to joining my fan-site.
We talked to Joe and made clear that we truly wanted to incorporate the community into the campaign's official presence, but that if these financial demands were a precursor to the campaign having access at all, that we would need to start with an official profile separately and have MySpace promote that instead.
This is also misleading, because it leaves something out.
Chris Hughes, in a telephone conversation, indicated that the campaign would prefer to acquire full access to the profile. They did not want an outsider managing an "official" profile, and I understood that. Chris Hughes then suggested that they could offer some type of one-time fee to transfer the profile over to the campaign. I asked him if they had any suggestion or any offer at that time, and he asked me to just think about it and we would speak the following morning. We both agreed that this fee would be largely symbolic, as it was impossible to calculate all of the time I put into it over the past couple of years.
That night, at his request, I did prepare a propsal and emailed it to Chris. I had never prepared such a proposal, and it was on very short notice, but I did the best I could. I thought about it for about 5 hours. I went for a long walk around my neighborhood and thought about what would be fair to all involved. I didn't like the idea of the campaign taking over a Myspace profile which had been a netroots phenomenon before the campaign or Myspace even got involved.
Regardless of my personal convictions, I wanted what was best for the campaign, and obviously Barack Obama, and I trusted that they knew what they were doing. For two and half years I worked very hard without ever expecting to be paid, but if they wanted to take control of this profile and take direct advantage of the community I helped to build, I thought it was fair to be paid. I even specified at that time that the fee was small enough to be cost-effective to the campaign, but large enough to be sure they were taking this community seriously. If they didn't like it, they could've easilly started and built their own Myspace profile and I would've put a link to it on mine. This appears to be what Hillary Clinton did, and it seemed to work out well.
And so it became clear that we needed to have MySpace point people at something we had at least basic access to -- immediately. In MySpace, politicians, musicians, and other public figures have the right to their own name (www.myspace.com/barackobama, www.myspace.com/hillaryclinton, etc.), and so we asked MySpace for use of that URL and to ensure that any promotion of "official" profiles for candidates be directed to the new profile our team created.
At any time, they could've asked for the URL and that wouldn't have been a problem. The campaign wanted the entire community I built and that was always clear.
After receiving my proposal, and a few postponed meetings, I was contacted by Josh Orton from the campaign. He indicated that he was "flabbergasted" by my proposal and that they did not have any budget for it. He accused me of using the profile for commercial purposes and made no counter-offer. I do not understand why Chris Hughes suggested this one-time fee, if later they had no budget for it and essentially accused me of trying to cash in.
At that time he asserted that I had two options: I could turn the profile over to the campaign, or it would be deleted immediately. I indicated that I would not turn it over to them, and it would be enormously offensive to me, and to all 160,000 members of the community to delete it after all of our hard work.
This conversation was followed up by two emails from Chris Hughes, indicating that they were sorry that I decided to "kill" this profile, and that Myspace needed my consent to transfer the profile over to them.
I responded to each email, indicating that "killing" the profile was not my decision and I would not be held responsible for it. In addition, Myspace did not have my consent to transfer the profile to anyone.
I also wrote that whatever their decision was, I would continue working on the profile until it was deleted.
Shortly afterwards, the profile was not deleted. Instead, Myspace and the campaign took control of the profile, deleted the content, and put a link to the new "official" profile. They used a community that took two and half years to build to quickly gain new 'friends' on their own page. (I'll also mention that I immediately received several emails complaining about how lame the new page is, specifically that it didn't load properly in some browsers).
The community of the 160,000 still exists, and we've made sure that MySpace will let Joe have access to the community he helped build. And we hope we can continue to work with him to make that as effective as it can be.
Myspace returned the blank profile with 160,000 friends (and quickly dropping) to me after I contacted techpresident.com and the news quickly spread throughout the Media. The campaign takes credit for this in Rospars' blog, but it was Myspace that contacted me and agreed to do this. In fact, Liba Rubenstein from Myspace indicated that the campaign would've preferred that the profile be transferred over to them without my consent, but Myspace would not allow that to happen.
The page was "taken" on Monday, and finally "returned" to me on Thursday evening. In my opinion, if I hadn't complained, my profile would've probably been transferred to them, and none of you would ever know that I had anything to do with building it.
I do not blame Myspace for any of this. It is their social-networking site. I do not blame Barack Obama himself either. However, I supported his campaign and helped out by rallying tens of thousands of supporters on Myspace and it worked exceptionally well. For Obama's campaign to try to take this profile, and later even write a blog that subtly accuses me of extortion, is the biggest slap in the face I've ever felt.
Returning a blank profile to me after the fact doesn't mend the situation. An apology just wouldn't mean much either.
At the end of the day, this is all new for everyone -- this Joe, that Joe, and everyone participating or commenting on it. We're flying by the seat of our pants, and establishing new ways of doing things every day. We're going to try new things, and sometimes it's going to work, and sometimes it's not going to work. That's the cost and that's the risk of experimenting. Joe launched this profile for all the right reasons, and for a while grew it with us.
But the ultimate purpose is building a community around the idea that ordinary people can come together and affect change in this country. Barack Obama is the candidate I believe can transform the process and make that change happen.
And, to the extent that more and more people every day come to that same conclusion, my bet is that both profiles will continue to grow.
Well, I'm offended by this rationalization, and it contradicts this entire blog. If it was acceptable for me to operate a Barack Obama fan-site on Myspace with 160,000 users, Joe Rospars' blog wouldn't exist, and none of this would've ever happened.
Barack Obama inspired me to create this profile, but the end result left me jaded enough to never publically support any candidate again.
I'm not asking for anything from Barack Obama or his campaign, but people need to know what happened here.
This profile was a place for "ordinary people to come together and affect change in this country". I worked so hard to build it because I believed in Barack Obama and wanted change as much as everyone on the profile did. Regardless of the campaign's intentions, the campaign quashed not only my right to have this profile, but the very hope that inspired me to build it.
It's a long time until the primaries, and there's a good chance I may get past this and still vote for Barack Obama. However, this should be a valuable lesson that campaigns should pay closer attention to what's really happening on the internet. We're not a list of names, and we're not inexpensive advertising. We are exactly the ordinary people you speak of, using the internet to attempt to change the world.
Sincerely,
-Joe Anthony
2:35
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