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Barack Obama wearing out welcome on MySpace
By Stone Martindale May 3, 2007, 18:06 GMT
Illinois Senator Barack Obama EPA/ERIK S. LESSER
Viral video and MySpace as tools for promotion have reached zenith levels. Barack Obama has even infiltrated the "town bulletin board" of MySpace by emailing the kids his doings in the political rat race.
Writer Brian Frazer details his annoyances with Obama in today's Los Angeles Times, and politely tells the Black Irish candidate, ""I'm sorry, Barack, we're through."
Frazer lists the incessant Obama spam messages that fill his new message cache, after he innocently added Obama as a "friend" when he came across the junior Senator's picture.
"Here are some of the bulletins he has bombarded me with recently," says Frazer:
Subject: new videos- after telling Frazer about the new videos, Obama tells Frazer he is working on podcasts-and Frazer opines: "If you can't figure out MySpace, are you ready to run a country?"
Subject: We're on our way to 100,000- Frazer had no idea what the message meant, and muses perhaps Obama is competing for friend counts with Dane Cook.
Subject: faces for Obama- a cockamamie mosaic project to sell through MoMa annoys Frazer, who urges Obama to focus on more relevant issues like ridding science classrooms of bibles.
Subject: MoveOn members?- Frazer urges Obama to ease up and not burn out voters just yet.
Subject: Atlanta folks?- Frazer is annoyed Barack does not seem to care that he is in LA, and doesn't care that Obama is in Atlanta.
Frazer ends his critique with the news he has since deleted Obama from his MySpace pals, the relationship cited as being too one-sided.
COMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Chris, you and Obama's campaign staff are liars. The fact is that Joe did not try to extort money. He was a volunteer who worked tirelessly for 2.5 years building up this account with over 160,000 friends. It became such a large deal that it was practically a part time job. The Obama campaign asked Joe what he thought would be reasonable compensation, and Joe told the campaign. They balked, went around Joe and stole the account name. Now they are busy smearing what used to be one of their most loyal supporters. Obama has shown himself to be nothing but an opportunist. New politics indeed. Ain't nothing new under the sun.
Both of you are right. Anthony did not try to steal money from Obama and Barack was not the one that made the mosaic nor is he the one posting videos, etc...Regardless, you did the right thing in 'deleting him as a friend' if that's what you felt you needed to do. However, for a majority of us 'myspacer/Obama devotees' his messages do not annoy us. We appreciate the updates as we constantly seek new information about the campaign efforts that so many of us gave money to. For the most part, Obama is liked and admired. He can spam me any time!
First of all, thinking that Obama himself has anything to do with the Myspace page is idiotic. There will always be minions for such work and we should always take that into regard when reading anything in the media. What I don't understand is this article. I personally am 'friends' with Obama on Myspace and I have never once received a bulletin, email, or any other spam from 'him'.
My understanding is that the Obama page on My Space only had 1/4 or 40,000 friends when the Obama campaign got involved with helping. So most joined after the announcement and an argument can be raised that says they joined because of the Obama publicity not because of Joe. I don't know how much work it takes to manage a profile on My Space, it's not like building a website from scratch. I'd be interested in finding out from Joe how much time he spent. I think folks are assuming it is night and day, but Joe could obviously hold down a day job while doing this. The Obama campaign apparently got involved for many reasons, one of which was because JOe was working on it from work, which is an ethics issue. The campaign has a lot of folks targeting them and couldn't afford the exposure of a volunteer doing the wrong thing in the public's eye and blowing up to tarnish the campaign. Imagine if the GOP found out Joe was using his employer's time to work on Obama's page - what would they have done with that - blaming the campaign and Obama's ethics ... On Joe's side he is not a campaign expert and doesn't know all the rules and pitfalls that might happen. Why should he? But since he decided not to be hired by Obama's campaign, they were both left between a rock and a hard place and had few graceful options left. Obviously tempers flared and it's a shame Barack didn't have the time between dozens of fundraising phone calls, his Senate job and multiple events EVERY DAY, to monitor all the fine workings of his campaign. Have some compassion folks for how this got out of control - no one is evil here - just the notion that evil must be found. Respectfully, Chris
Yup.. another opportunistic polititian.
Nothing new here.
They have tens of millions in cash but refused to pay a resonable fee for work done. Hoever, they have money to pay $1.00 per e-mail names!
in that case, the guy should have asked $160,000 for the site at myspace.
The guy only asked $39,000 and about 10K to maintain the site.
All of you should get the facts straight before you post.
Now, Obama has to hire someone to keep that running and it will cost more than $ 39,000..... plus got some people pissed because of his greediness.
Obama is an inexperienced idiot with lots of hot air.
He'll never become president.
Frazer's Obama article was tongue in cheek-and I loved the recap-you people all need to relax a little.
Barak isn't even officially on myspace. In my friends list there is a page for Obama and they are still trying to get his approval. They do not send out anything unless it's very important. In the last month I only got three messages from that camp. So check your references and sources again buddy. I don't like to see this shit. It's the reason America is in the position that it is. F the media and all their fad stories, this one won't make it.
Chris Hughes asked Joe Anthony for a figure regarding the value of his services. Joe Anthony gave a figure, but the Obama campaign said it (39k+10k in fees) was too costly (they only raised 26 million).
The Obama campaign never counteroffered, instead they went straight to MySpace and asked for control of the account. In doing so they lost 160,000 friends.
I reiterate-Frazer is a humorist and this article is a recap of his HUMOROUS plea to Obama to stop spamming him-it is a funny story-everyone has their ax to grind these days-get over yourselves!
This is supposed to be funny? What a lane, poorly writen, confusing article.
Sounds like a bunch of 15-year-olds in a chat room.
First of all in response to the comments of receiving emails from Senator Obama, his OFFICIAL page has been up for 2 days and I joined and have not received a single email. I did receive a message for me to confirm my email so they could verify my identify so I could post a comment. The emails you are discussing came from Joe Anthony PRETENDING and USING Senator Barack Obama's name to send out those emails misleading the recipients into believing they were coming from the REAL Senator Obama.
It was not until AFTER Joe Anthony changed the password so that the campaign could insure nothing was sent out under Senator Obama's name that was inappropriate that he DEMANDED payment. Myspace is FREE so to ask for $10,000 to maintain a FREE myspace page is bogus. Also, I donate to the campaign and I don't want one dime of my money going to someone who pretended to be someone he is not. He did it before Senator Obama even had the opportunity to set up a page, therefore taking the name and not allowing the campaign to register a page under the same name. He then threatened the campaign if they didn't pay him almost $50,000 that he would send out emails and get his friends to go to the official page to badmouth the Senator. Also, there is an FEC finance guideline that you are not ALLOWED to pay volunteers. If he wanted a job he should have submitted his resume and been considered for a job. Chris Hughes is no longer in charge of the Obama official website for your information.
I pay for my own blog as a VOLUNTEER to promote Senator Obama and help pay for a message board that promotes him. Do we ask the campaign to pay us for doing it? NO NO NO. We are VOLUNTEERS. If he wanted payment, he should have entered into a contract to run a FREE myspace page. The guy just wants to bilk the campaign, plain and simple. Let's get over it already. This is rediculous. Anything Joe Anthony did using the name of Barack Obama, no matter what is was, would be attributed to Senator Obama and Senator Obama should not have to answer for actions of another party. Sorry, you have this one wrong folks. Joe Anthony is owned not one dime. And certainly not mine.
I can't beleave you people are going to try to put this guy in the white house,he should be sent back where he cam from.STOP ALL IMMIGRATION NOW!!!!!!!
Chris: Visit Anthony's remaining personal myspace & read the sequence of events from the other point of view.
Chris B.: Re your inquiry 'how much work a myspace page is if it's promotional'... well, I'm just a small time model and approving Join requests and replying to questions soon grew to several hours a day... this for a profile that only had 700 friends. It got so bad I gave up. Can you imagine how many hours it would take to reply to a much larger message source?
My musings:
1. If the Obama team had a legal right to that URL, they should've taken it at the beginning. Getting a bunch of additional customized work out of the guy, then yanking the URL so much later, means the Obama team plays by whatever rules benefit them the most at some given moment, not by what's right or legal. (Bad sign.)
2. I wonder about the free speech aspects of this. Shouldn't any of us be able to run a fan site about a politician, and run it how we want if we aren't breaking any laws? (If the guy'd broken any laws, he woulda been charged with them at the beginning of the whole thing - right?!)
Every @$$ hat political want to be is crying TRUST ME, TRUST ME, YOU CAN TRUST ME with your future. WTF can’t they trust us with their future one man and over 160.000 people better wake up and see reality.
BYTE ME
Did you know the LA Times article wasn't true - it was done out of humor?
And why are you reporting on ANOTHER reporter? What kind of journalism is this? Did you not look into this at all? You know, investigating is the first thing you are supposed to do for an article. Maybe you should have written an actual article instead an article about an article?
New Politics. Now there is an oxymoron if I ever heard one. What makes anybody believe that Barak or any other the others has anything new to bring the world?
This guy is a patsy for the clintons, Think about it and watch the clinton chronicles.
This article is incredibly one-sided. He 'infiltrated' the town bulletin board? He's 'bombarding' this guy with messages? That's just ridiculous. In reality, Barack and his campaign associates are being wise and resourceful in taking advantage of such a huge media outlet... you're just jealous.
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ChrisMay 3rd, 2007 - 18:53:23
Obama did not do that, this CRAZY Anthony guy that tried to extort money from Obama did that. That's why Obama had to stop him from using his name and bombarding people with messages.
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