Link: Rocketboom Goes Boom. Distress Signals Sent. - AdPulp.
Steve Rubel seems to say Amanda Congdon is at fault, claiming (quoted below on AdPulp) she "pulled a Star Jones." That sounds too much like somebody's spin to me. Turns out Rubel is a PR guy. Go figure.
I obviously don't know the whole story, but I do know I loved Amanda on Rocketboom, and she just came off the screen as THE first video-blogging breakout artist. That's history-making right there. Did old media lure her away, or was it simply stupid-ass business practices and a dumb contract offer?
It still shows us where the real power resides, right? Does Amanda hold all the chips? Does the platform hold it? OR, was she lured away by more lucrative offers in old media that the Rocketboom platform keeper couldn't or was unwilling to meet? Amanda says no, and she seems to be implying that the keeper of the Rocketboom platform got drunk on some of his own power (my interpretation).
Thing is, in new media, the barrier is very low to simply moving to one's own platform. Despite what "portals" think (that they have power), Yahoo! syndicating a Huffington Post columnist who has his own blog platform as well (say, Jay Rosen) means that Jay doesn't really NEED Yahoo! or technically, Huffington Post. Jay can still reach all the same audiences with his own feed. (I'm not implying that Jay or anyone else is having problems with their platforms; I'm just using him as a hypothetical example.)
Link: Rocketboom Goes Boom. Distress Signals Sent. - AdPulp.
Rocketboom Goes Boom. Distress Signals Sent.
Note the upsidedown map
Rocketboom, a new media company with a ton of fuel on board, lost a co-pilot and host, Amanda Congdon to Hollywood. Andrew Baron, the show's producer, is now piloting the craft and looking for a soft landing.
Washington Post tracks Rocketboom's flight path:
When Rocketboom started in 2004, young video producer Andrew Baron sent out a casting call in New York and hired Congdon to produce a daily Internet show without a fancy studio -- just $25 a day, a desk and a map of the world as a backdrop. Eventually, viewers were drawn to Congdon's offbeat humor, the show's funny camera angles, and its unpredictable format and content. As hundreds of thousands of viewers began to tune in, Rocketboom asked for advertising bids on eBay and brought in $40,000 to $85,000 a week at times.
Steve Rubel, senior vice president of Edelman Worldwide's Me2Revolution practice, told the Post that Congdon "pulled a Star Jones."
On her blog, Amanda Unboomed, Congdon says:
I am disheartened by Andrew Baron's decision to spread misinformation. He knows I cannot move to LA without a job...but insists on spinning things this way to shore up his assertion that I am "walking away" from Rocketboom. I did not walk away. I did not accept Andrew's idea of "partnership".
You can check out Congdon's confessional resignation here.
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