Obama’s MySpace Problem
by Michael HoffmanWednesday, May 9th, 2007
In a meeting with a major nonprofit this week, I was asked about the tension and issues related to Web 2.0 and losing control of content. It’s the magic question. How do we take advantage of user-generated content and user-controlled forums such as MySpace and YouTube without totally losing control of our brand? The answer is, very very carefully.
Even the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, which has put big resources into these issues couldn’t escape serious problems. Their case is special, however. There are laws about having people doing things on behalf of the campaign — either they are “on-the-books” and you as the campaign have to account for everything they say and do, or they are totally “off-the-books” and you can’t even talk to them without fear of breaking federal election laws.
The Obama MySpace page was originally created by a volunteer, and originally didn’t say “official site”. It then grew and grew and grew and the campaign wanted — needed — to take it over and control it. Some of the info on the site wasn’t right, for example. This was not a random fan site, but the one MySpace page with his name in the URL. The person who created it then wanted to get paid for all the work he had done. Not happening. They should have spent the money and kept the fan. Now they have people running around all over the web calling them bullies.
You can read all about it on the techPresident blog.
