(cross-posted at Daily Kos)
The blogosphere is abuzz today with the news that Barack Obama's presidential campaign took control of its MySpace domain after initially working with the previous holder of that user ID, Joe Anthony, for no cost. Here's a sampling of the reaction at some of the major liberal blogs. After turning down what they viewed as the high cost - $39,000 - for the rights to control of the site, the Obama campaign, working with MySpace, was granted full control without having to pay Anthony.
The general reaction from the leading blogs - Daily Kos, MyDD, and Eschaton - seem to indicate that they believe the Obama campaign screwed Anthony over big time. I do agree that the Obama campaign could have handled the issue more tactfully. That being said, the blogosphere criticism seems to show an underlying lack of understanding about the functioning of social networking websites such as MySpace. Follow me beneath the fold for analysis...
Here's some of the reaction from the major liberal blogs:
Shitting on your biggest supporters is generally not a wise thing to do.
I may just be getting old, so I've never really understood Myspace as anything other than a place to sample songs, but I really don't understand the tendency to treat volunteers as disposable. 50 grand is chump change.
Jerome Armstrong at MyDD (this is the article that both Kos and Atrios linked to):
Yea, $49K to deliver 160,000 supporters; that's .32 cents each for opted in and engaged activsts. A bargain. [The amount was actually up to $44K] $50,000 is what it takes to advertise on the Liberal Ad Network for two weeks. It's a minor expenditure in the grand scheme of things.
Matt Stoller at MyDD:
There is nothing unusual about such a conflict between the open world of Joe Anthony and the gatekeeping world of David Axelrod. The open world is fairly relaxed and encourages sharing control and power with all stakeholders. The gatekeeper world is all about control and turning everyone into a signholder. The likely scenario here is that the Obama internet team promoted the unofficial page because it was cool and relaxed, and then adult supervision scared them into believing they needed control. They put pressure on Anthony, who valued his own work. The Obama campaign couldn't both stomach the need for control and the real moral need to value the work done by Anthony, and so it appears the campaign just lied and threatened him. This is standard Democratic politics, only when you put it on the internet, it looks really bad.I don't really know that this episode is particularly important in the context of who will win in 2008, but it is interesting. This is the exact definition of a campaign treating people like an ATM. And this brings me back to the movement that's being created, because while this seems like a small episode, it's actually events like this that in some ways help form our movement. Joe Anthony will never forget this, and it's pretty obvious he's good at leading large groups of people. Anthony will never trust campaign operatives again, and hopefully, he'll plug into the Democratic Party somewhere else.
My main contention is this: all of the above analysis completely ignores the actual function of social networking websites. They are not the same as the netroots by any stretch of the mind. To be, this is typified in these two responses in their respective threads:
Kos, in responding to a comment that Obama should be able to control his message:
that's what the (10+ / 0-)DC consultants argue.
Which is fine, if Obama wants to run a traditional campaign rather than a people-powered one.
And Jerome's response to my assertion that the 160,000+ friends that the unofficial MySpace profile had were not 'engaged activists':
They are not supporters that are engaged enough to have opted in? That's a ridiculous claim.
I'm going to address the matter as a 21 year-old college student. MySpace, Facebook, and other such social networking sites are dominated, in terms of activity, by people my age - not those as old as Kos and Jerome, or even Stoller, who is ahead of me by 8 years or so. And first and foremost, these websites are not used for political purposes. They're used for socializing in the form of listing your interests, posting pictures, and commenting on other people's profiles. This leads to people spending lots of time at these sites, but mainly as an incidental activity. Don't believe me? I walk through Wharton, the top undergraduate business school in the country, and I always see people looking at posted pictures and other students' Facebook profiles while they are studying. The use of these websites is largely not used in a constructive fashion, per se, but as more of a distraction while studying and filler in the down times that people have. That's why the idea that 160,000 friends - or even the 300,000+ members of an unofficial Barack Obama Facebook group - do not constitute 'engaged activists' who have 'opted in' by any means. Friends on Facebook and MySpace do not mean they are your 'friends'; all it could be is a gesture of interest at one point in time - nothing more.
Yes, there are definitely those who are heavily involved. For example, Students for Barack Obama - which started out as a Facebook group - started its own organization with a national and state organization. It's now become an official part of the campaign. Nevertheless, it is still a minority of students that are in these groups or that are friends with a MySpace profile that will provide more than just a vote, or even tangential interest.
The second issue is the cost. Setting up a MySpace profile or a Facebook group does not require much effort. Putting up pictures, posting updates, and writing general information is not that time-consuming. Here's an excerpt from Micah Sifry's writeup on the incident:
Anthony's request to be compensated for all the work he was putting into Obama's Myspace page--anywhere from five to ten hours a day--was the final straw, apparently. After kicking around various ideas including hiring him or making him a consultant, the Obama people asked Anthony to propose a one-time consulting fee. In exchange he would give them control of the page, with credit for the work he had put into it."I went for a four mile walk to think about it," he told me, continuing:
I considered the time I had put into it from January 1st of this year, not counting the previous two years. It was about $39,000. Plus I asked that if any fees were to be paid to MySpace by the campaign up to that point in time, those should be shared with me, up to $10,000. There was no counter-offer. They said they didn't have any money.
$39,000 is an obscene amount of money to be paid over a period of 4 months to maintain an unofficial profile on MySpace. That's not to say that one cannot make a living off of work done on MySpace, Tila Tequila is largely a celebrity because of her MySpace profile. But what services was Anthony providing that could possibly have been worth that much money? Tequila has a career in modeling, acting, and music (discussions on whether her skills in those fields merit her pay is entirely another issue). For me, the most that Anthony could have done (I'll be honest - I did not view his MySpace site before it was changed over to the official one) would be to post updates, links, and video and pictures taken by others, along with confirming friend requests. That is something that can easily be done in-house, much less at a cost of what amounts to nearly $120,000 on an annualized basis. It is true that if one is really into MySpace or Facebook, time can be sucked up quite quickly. That being said, Anthony should have realized that demanding what is an exorbitant amount of money for services that aren't particularly specialized or require much technical know-how beforehand was going to met with hostility. Simply put, you cannot evaluate the value of a contact list of 160,000 - particularly when you don't have access to their email address, their snail mail addresses, and are likely friends for the sake of it instead of being an engaged activist.
I understand that 'people-powered politics' is about letting us - ordinary people - have the power to go out and make a difference. But that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be some guidance as to how the campaign is run. In Anthony's case, it doesn't even seem like he was necessarily positing Obama as a candidate in a fashion that was remarkably different from how others were. And by making such a big case about this, the netroots has vastly overrated the power of social networking websites in the political arena - because they do not understand that the vast majority of these websites are utilized in a way that does not promote real political activity. Should the Obama campaign compensated Anthony in some fashion? Yes, so long as the request was reasonable. $39,000 for 4 months of work is not reasonable. People can rip on media consultants for the ridiculous amount they make, but that doesn't mean that others should be paid in a similar fashion.
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