• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, May 3, 2007

All of the current crop of presidential hopefuls is attempting to tap into the Internet to rally support and raise funds, but it's obvious that they haven't yet come to terms with the role that ordinary consumers play in Web 2.0.

Yet another example came this week, when the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama got into a dispute with Joe Anthony, who had been among the politician's biggest supporters. As detailed on the site TechPresident, Anthony created a MySpace profile for Obama that drew more than 160,000 friends since its 2004 launch.

Anthony and the Obama camp collaborated for a while, but the relationship began to unravel as support for Obama grew. Anthony increased the time he was devoting to the page to keep up with the flood of visitors, and also eventually asked for compensation, according to press reports. At the same time, the campaign appeared to have doubts about whether Anthony -- who wasn't officially on staff -- should be acting as an unofficial spokesman via MySpace.

Ultimately, the campaign reclaimed the page, http://www.myspace.com/barackobama, but not the friends that it had amassed under Anthony. As of this morning, the page had slightly over 21,100 friends.

Details of the dispute between Obama's people and Anthony are still unfolding, but it's clear that the dust-up has cost Obama some goodwill from a former proponent. Late last night, Obama called Anthony at home to speak with him personally, prompting Anthony to issue a post on his personal blog detailing his "mixed feelings." "It'll take time for me to work this out and decide if I will personally continue to support Obama, regardless of how I feel about his campaign's handling of this situation," Anthony wrote.

Coming the same week as the user revolt on Digg, the Anthony-Obama fracas seems to illustrate, again, the power that regular citizens wield online. Digg execs Tuesday decided to stop trying to delete information about how to get around digital rights management software on DVDs, after users overwhelmed the site with such information; the company that depended on the collective wisdom of the masses realized that it needed its users' support to survive.

In the Obama-Anthony situation, a regular user was able to amass a 160,000-person-strong fan base for Obama on one site alone. But, now that the professionals have taken over the page, it's not clear how many MySpace members will return to it.