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DEL.ICIO.USAs the Web turns
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The blogosphere has been electrified for the past day over an online clash mildly reminiscent of the recent Star Jones Reynolds-Barbara Walters brouhana.
Amanda Congdon, star of the video blog Rocketboom, is gone.
For the unfamiliar — and that’s probably most of you — Rocketboom started in New York in 2004. Andrew Baron, a video producer, hired Congdon to produce a daily Internet show. The Web site featured a daily three-minute video combining tech and pop culture news. Congdon became a phenomenon as she attracted a reported 300,000 viewers daily. Some say it was her quirky delivery. Some say it was the offbeat content. (And Sara Kehaulani Goo wrote today in The Washington Post that Congdon’s attractiveness didn’t hurt, either, in drawing audience.) The Post article reported that Rocketboom asked for ad bids on eBay and brought in $40,000 to $85,000 a week at times. Under the original agreement, Baron owned 51 percent and Congdon 49 percent of Rocketboom.
A lot of industry bloggers were cheering for Rocketboom because they hoped a video blog could prove to be financially successful.
What happens now to Rocketboom — and Congdon — remains unclear. “I’m not on vacation — not by a long shot,” Congdon said on her own video blog, Amanda UnBoomed. “Here I am, unboomed. My partner, Andrew Baron, is no longer interested in being my partner.” She later wrote that she was staying with her parents in Connecticut until she “can get back on her feet.”
The blogosphere erupted in reports that Congdon had been fired. Baron told The Post and countless media sources that he didn’t know Congdon was leaving Rocketboom until he saw her video blog. According to Baron, Congdon wanted to move to Los Angeles, but he and the rest of Rocketboom wanted her to wait until they figured out how to make the move financially. “Amanda decided she was not able to stay in NYC any longer ….” Baron wrote in one e-mail.
Bloggers lamented the loss of Congdon. It’s quite clear she has her legion of fans. Jason Calacanis of Weblogs, Inc,, now part of AOL, offered Amanda a job at Netscape. Baron even made a very public appeal to Congdon on her blog, to which she added extensive comments, maintaining she was fired and reminding Baron that she still owned 49 percent of Rocketboom.
Calacanis chided both in a later post — Baron for how he treated her and Congdon for how she reacted. “The whole thing is a mess and everyone winds up losing.”
Rocketboom reports that it will have an interim host Monday. We’ll see how that goes. But the intriguing news at the moment is going on in the blogosphere. What will happen to Amanda Cogdon? What will happen to Rocketboom? And what does this mean for those wanting to turn video blogging into a profitable industry?
This story is probably far from over.
Comments
By Harold
July 7, 2006 11:42 AM | Link to this
Harold says that for this story not to be over, somebody would have to both know what this pointless gossip is all about and also actually give a sheet.
By Harold
July 7, 2006 11:43 AM | Link to this
Harold says that for this story not to be over, somebody would have to both know what this pointless gossip is all about and also actually give a sheet.