Rocketboom

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Rocketboom

Hosting Joanne Colan (July 12, 2006 to present). Amanda Congdon (October 26, 2004 to July 5, 2006)
 RSS http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/index.xml
 Atom http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/atom.xml
Updates Daily
Website http://www.rocketboom.com/

Rocketboom is a daily vlog produced by Andrew Baron. It was launched on October 26, 2004 and was hosted by Amanda Congdon[1] until she left on July 5, 2006. Joanne Colan began hosting on July 12, 2006[2].

Contents

[edit] Description

Rocketboom is presented in the format of a newscast with a comedic slant. Each weekday Rocketboom offers oddities, vlog excerpts and explores emerging social movements. It sometimes presents political commentary. Apart from an occasional use of old newsreel footage or vintage commercials, mainstream media is avoided. The Rocketboom weblog and Apollo Pony feature supplemental material that isn't fit for the vlog.

[edit] Distribution

Rocketboom is available on the website, TiVo, iTunes, Miro, and many other locations around the internet. The show is widely distributed via an RSS 2.0 feed.

[edit] People

The Rocketboom production team members include its creator Andrew Baron (writer, producer, director), Joanne Colan (host, writer, producer), Kenyatta Cheese (Producer), Jamie Wilkinson (Developer), Joe Bonacci (Editor) and Elspeth 'Ellie' Rountree (Producer)[3][4]. Rocketboom and Rocketboom Human Wire's World Video Report both present webcasts packaged by its correspondents in the United States, Europe and Kenya: Annie Tsai (Los Angeles), Andy Carvin (Washington DC), Zadi Diaz (Los Angeles), Ruud Elmendorp (Nairobi), Steve Garfield (Boston), Milt Lee (South Dakota), Chuck Olsen (Minneapolis), Bre Pettis (Seattle), Tyson Root (Houston), Stefan M. Seydel (Switzerland/Germany/Austria) and Graham Walker (Prague).

[edit] Popularity

Rocketboom interviewed Jimmy Wales at the Time 100 Most Influential People Gala as of May 8, 2006 as featured on this vlog on May 9, 2006. Watch the vlog here.
Rocketboom interviewed Jimmy Wales at the Time 100 Most Influential People Gala as of May 8, 2006 as featured on this vlog on May 9, 2006. Watch the vlog here.

When Rocketboom debuted in 2004, it went from an initial 700 viewers to 70,000 viewers in its first ten months. The vlog's success was noted in the summer of 2005 by CBS Evening News[5], Wired News[6] and other publications. BusinessWeek labeled it "the most popular site of its kind on the Net."[7]

When Steve Jobs from Apple introduced the video iPod to developers on a keynote, he showed a playlist of video podcasts on his computer and Rocketboom was at the top. [8] When changing the subject to podcasts, Joanne Colan was shown on the screen. [9]

Rocketboom was demonstrated exclusively on stage a second time by Steve Jobs during the introduction of the iTV in September, 2006.[citation needed]

The January 9, 2006, issue of Newsweek stated that Rocketboom had "130,000 daily viewers."

On February 2, 2006 Rocketboom was incorporated into an episode of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in a fictional scene of a murderer watching a Rocketboom commentary on the crime.[10] In the month following the CSI episode, the number of Rocketboom viewers jumped to 200,000. As noted by Dan Mitchell in the New York Times (2006-03-11), this is similar to the size of a small cable show audience. In "A Blog Writes the Obituary of TV,"[11] Mitchell wrote:

One recent week, the video blog Rocketboom drew an average of 200,000 people a day to watch its short daily news reports on technology, the arts and other topics. The Abrams Report on MSNBC, meanwhile, drew 215,000 viewers to its weekday hourlong show about legal issues. Does this anecdote -- that an unpopular cable news show and a wildly popular Web site draw similarly sized audiences -- prove that the Internet is upending the economics of the television business? It does for Prince Campbell, a former media executive who runs the Chartreuse (BETA) blog. Mr. Campbell wields superlatives in a particularly bloggish manner at chartreuse.wordpress.com. "Broadcast television is dead," he declares. "Just like the Internet killed the music industry, it's about to do the same thing to broadcast TV."

In April and May 2006, Rocketboom introduced its first commercials. The first commercial sponsors were TRM and Earthlink.[12] Each of which was a series of 5 commercials shown, one per day, over the week that they were featured.

In Fall of 2006, Rocketboom's popularity claims and self-published statistics came into question. In an interview with Dow Jones, Baron claimed "400,000 viewers per day" and that "some episodes are more popular and receive well over a million complete downloads." After extensive analysis[13] BusinessWeek reported that Rocketboom provided incorrect statistics data resulting in "cutting in half the original estimate... to 78,500 downloads" and noting that Rocketboom refused "to let any third party... verify these stats."[14]

In March of 2008, Compete.com named Rocketboom one of the fastest growing video startups on the internet.[15]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Congdon, Amanda (2004-10-26). october 26, 002004 : daily. Rocketboom. Retrieved on 2006-07-07.
  2. ^ Colan, Joanne (2006-07-12). Wednesday July 12, 2006 : daily. Rocketboom. Retrieved on 2006-08-25.
  3. ^ Rocketboom to Expand Video Blogging Portfolio. Retrieved on 2008-01-18.
  4. ^ Rocketboom - about. Retrieved on 2008-01-18.
  5. ^ FutureMedia News, Reviews, Interviews, Analysis, Expos, Press Events, Parties. Retrieved on 2006-07-07.
  6. ^ Cohn, David. "The Vlog World's Greatest Hits", Wired News, 2005-07-13. Retrieved on 2006-07-20. 
  7. ^ Green, Heather. "Rocketboom's Powerful Lift-Off", BusinessWeek, 2005-09-05. Retrieved on 2006-07-07. 
  8. ^ Robert Mackey (2005-12-11). TV Stardom on $20 a Day. New York Times. Retrieved on 2008-05-13.
  9. ^ Paul Boutin (2006-09-12). Live from the Steve Jobs Keynote -- "It's Showtime". Retrieved on 2008-05-13.
  10. ^ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Retrieved on 2006-07-07.
  11. ^ Mitchell, Dan. "A Blog Writes the Obituary of TV", New York Times, 2006-03-11. Retrieved on 2006-07-07. 
  12. ^ Anderson, Diane. "Rocketboom Takes Off: Earthlink and TRM are First Advertisers", Brandweek, 2006-02-17. Retrieved on 2006-07-07. 
  13. ^ Green, Heather. "Why Ze Frank is Right and Wrong About Rocketboom", BusinessWeek, 2006-10-27. Retrieved on 2006-10-28. 
  14. ^ Green, Heather. "The Continuing Saga of Rocketboom Numbers and Yanking Our Estimate", BusinessWeek, 2006-10-27. Retrieved on 2007-05-29. 
  15. ^ Patriquin, Alex. "February Online Video: Politics Offsets the Writer’s Strike, GodTube.com Racks Up Impressive Year/Year Growth", compete.com, 2006-10-27. Retrieved on 2008-03-25. 

[edit] External links