More Obama banter: Bloggers don't work for free

B.O.F.H. writes about my previous posting, Barak Obama’s “volunteer” should cost his campaign $39,000? I don’t think so:

You have an interesting (though probably unresearched) emotion (puff) piece on something, congrats!...
The Obama campaign wanted him to (effectively) do a second full time job (his day job being a paralegal) in managing the site. He asked for compensation (we know, ZDNet bloggers do this for free!) for his time and efforts after they wanted him to do 40 hours a week on it (apparently it is a popular site/page now). Basically what went down is as follows (from Anthony Speaks On Obama MySpace Takeover: 'They Took This Profile Without My Consent':
So one night, at the peak of his frustration, Anthony said he e-mailed the campaign and said he couldn't continue working on the site unless he was paid. "Not because I wanted money, but [because] I had a full-time job and I have a very active life and this took over all of that," he explained. "It was affecting my job, my ability to focus on my work. I had no personal life. You know, it seemed absolutely reasonable."

Let's ignore the"puff piece" digs, because I covered the background facts without editorializing, unlike this commenter. Anthony's selfless-sounding version is only one version. Could the Obama campaign have handled this better? Sure, they could have offered Anthony a job, but as you point out in your comments on Donna Bogatin's piece, the increased traffic was a function of MySpace's promotion of the page, not Anthony's work alone. His two-years work is only partially responsible for the sudden growth in Obama friends. In either case, it was Obama's identity that was represented on the site.

Bloggers shouldn't "do it for free." Certainly, I don't blog for free here on ZD Net, where the company is earning revenue on every page view.

However, volunteering for a political campaign is different than creating a small business dedicated to servicing a campaign for a fee.

My position is that Anthony wasn't a volunteer—he acted as a speculator when he transformed the campaign's request for control of the MySpace profile into a demand for compensation—and, therefore, has no moral high ground in this argument, which he and his supporters have claimed.

The MySpace page represents itself as authored by Obama. See my reply to other comments about that -- everything refers to Obama in the first person.

If we value personal identity and authenticity in politics, a "volunteer" should, if they can't do a "second full-time job," hand over the job to someone willing to do it. That's how volunteering works, you give what you can. If he was unable to do the job the Barak Obama MySpace page had evolved into, he should simply have stepped aside.

If Anthony "owns" the page, then it should not represent itself as Obama's page, but Anthony's page about Obama, but, as noted, it is all first-person Obama. That's where his cry of blame falls short: He appropriated Obama's identity and wanted to be paid to give it up. That's like buying and parking a domain name hoping it will be bought back when someone realizes there is value there. Adding all the friends was, in that context, an investment and not a volunteer effort. It failed, and I think rightly so.

The terms under which we volunteer have not changed. Trying to change them to make this seem like an anti-populist move by the Obama campaign is disingenuous and plain bad for online politics.

Seriously, if he did this to help Obama win a campaign, why did he need control? It would be far more effective to have conducted himself as a contributor who supports his candidate rather than trying to be paid for his efforts.

As for the value of 160,000 friends on MySpace, given that Obama is already back to 22,000 in less than 36 hours, it is hardly a disaster. If anything, it will help increase the value of the refriended as serious supporters. Friending is overrated in economic and political value.

Disclosure: I have no association with the Obama campaign, nor do I harbor any desire to have one. My interest is in creating an increasingly authentic politics, which having someone perform as a MySpace surrogate on behalf of a politician does nothing to achieve.