Obama MySpace Discrepancy - Joe Rospars and TechPresident

See Also:
Joe Anthony Challenges Joe Rospars - TechPresident
http://hammer2006.blogspot.com/2007/05/joe-anthony-challenges-joe-rospars.html

And a further interesting dimension!: http://hammer2006.blogspot.com/2007/05/joe-anthonys-published-on-myspace-email.html

1. By Joe Rospars - Our MySpace Experiment

Excerpt:
"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 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.

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.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post_group/ObamaHQ/CvSl#comments

2. TechPresident
Excerpt:
"As for Joe Rospars lengthy post on "Our MySpace Experiment," you can read the whole thing for yourself. Most of it tracks with my own reporting on how the relationship between Anthony and the Obama new media team started out, all the way up through their initial discussions with him about possibly coming on board and working out an understanding for shared management of the site.

But what strikes me as odd about it is Rospars' claim that Anthony's "list of itemized financial requests" came unbidden, after the workload on the page exploded and Anthony cut off the campaign's password access to the site. Rospars would have you believe that Anthony was in effect extorting the campaign by witholding access, but my notes of my conversations with Obama staff, which were "on background" make clear that Anthony only produced that proposal (the $39,000 plus the $10,000 for possible advertising spending by the campaign on MySpace) at the request of Chris Hughes.

I should add here that I know Rospars a little and based on our past conversations and his general reputation among politech folks, he's a straight shooter. I don't think he's saying anything other than what he believes were the actual version of events. But what I don't know is whether Rospars was personally involved in all the details of the relationship with Anthony, or what he's written here reflects what others who were more directly involved are feeding him."
http://www.techpresident.com/node/305

Alex

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