Obama Camp Takes Control of MySpace Page
By NEDRA PICKLER
WASHINGTON – Is MySpace always mine or can it belong to someone else? At the cost of losing 160,000 friends, Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has taken over control of the MySpace page listed under his name on the popular social networking site.
For the past two and a half years, the page has been run by an Obama supporter from Los Angeles named Joe Anthony. At first, that arrangement was fine with the Obama team, which worked with Anthony on the content and even had the password to make changes themselves.
But as the site exploded in popularity in recent months, the campaign became concerned about an outsider having control of the content and responses going out under Obama’s name and told Anthony they wanted him to turn it over.
In this new frontier of online campaigning, it’s hard to determine the value of 160,000 MySpace friends – about four times what any other official campaign MySpace page has amassed. But the Obama campaign decided they wouldn’t pay $39,000, which is what Anthony said he proposed for his extensive work on the site, plus some additional fees up to $10,000.
MySpace reluctantly stepped in to settle the dispute and decided that Obama should have the rights to control http://www.myspace.com/barackobama as of Monday night, while Anthony had the right to take the contact information for all the friends who signed up while he was in control. That includes the right to tell them exactly how he feels about the Obama campaign.
Anthony referred The Associated Press to his MySpace blog, where he has written that he is heartbroken that the Obama campaign was “bullying” him out of the page he built. He said the candidate has lost his vote.
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is trying to rebuild his friends network from scratch and was up to more than 17,000 by midday Wednesday. “We support the MySpace community, and look forward to building our relationship,” said campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
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WASHINGTON (AP) – John Edwards is blending a new television commercial with his online Web message, giving his activist supporters a voice in demanding that Congress stand up to President Bush’s veto of a withdrawal timetable for Iraq.
The ad, which will air in Washington on broadcast and cable programs, calls on Congress to ignore the veto and to send Bush the “same bill again and again.”
Edwards, who is lagging behind Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in the polls and in fundraising, is seeking to distinguish himself as an anti-war voice.
The timetable for pulling out of Iraq is contained in a bill that provides money to troops in Iraq. Unwilling to risk delays in money for the troops, congressional Democratic leaders are now struggling to adjust the bill to avoid a veto without angering the party’s most liberal anti-war members.
It is that tension that Edwards is seeking to exploit with his new commercial.
The ad will also run on the Edwards’ Web site as well as on YouTube, the popular online video site. Edwards wants viewers to post their own personal messages to Congress about Iraq. The campaign will then incorporate those messages into future Web ads.
The new ad depicts nine people criticizing the Bush administration.
“President Bush isn’t listening to us,” one person says.
“It’s time to end the war,” another person says.
“Don’t back down to President Bush,” adds another.
“Send him the same bill again and again.”
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Associated Press Writer Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington contributed to this report.