According to Daytona Beach News-Journal, a steering committee, made up of volunteers from businesses and the community, has been meeting since fall tasked with providing a blueprint for Daytona Beach’s future that will preserve the city’s quality and vitality. Recently, the committee set up a MySpace page to improve its outreach efforts, but that move backfired when unseemly ads from MySpace “friends” began to appear in the comments section of the committee’s page.
The controversy hit when Doug Kosarek, a member of the steering committee and chairman of its Outreach Committee, as well as a morning radio show host, was the first to join the site as a “friend,” allowing anyone who visited the page to link directly to his personal MySpace page.
As a radio host, Kosarek said, he has many friends, including models, who are listed as friends on his page. Each friend has a photo posted, and some of the models’ photos were posted on the site. Some people found them offensive.
Kosarek said he meant no disrespect.
“The reason we had an idea to utilize MySpace was to try to reach a totally different segment of the population that doesn’t pay attention to public notices in newspapers,” he said. “It’s one avenue we thought might work.”
A quick look at the committee’s page shows that the offensive material has since been removed. I mention the issue, simply to showcase the ever-growing desire to do the MySpace thing. I have no problem with the bandwagon jumpers, I just think it’s important to know what pool you’re dipping your toe into.
