Amanda Congdon Unboomed On Rocketboom | Women Lifestyle, Fashion, Health, Beauty and Personality

Amanda Congdon Unboomed On Rocketboom
Category : Women Business, Women Gossip, Women Lifestyle

Amanda Congdon Unboomed On Rocketboom pic RocketBoom star video blogger Amanda Congdon shocked not only her fans, but apparently her partner as well, when she announced this morning that she is leaving Rocketboom, the wildly popular videoblog, because â€œapparently my partner, Andrew Baron, is no longer interested in being my partner.â€ Though the details are unclear, Congdon has left the building - Star Jones style. Amanda is the rocket that makes the show go boom.
According to a video she posted under the rubric, “Unboomed,” Congdon alluded to a falling out between her and her partner, Andrew Baron–who she said owns 51 percent of the venture to her 49 percent. “It’s just something I have to live with,” she says. “I guess this is my last appearance in front of the map.”

Meanwhile, Baron insists in an online chatroom that he didn’t fire the vlog anchor, that she quit. He says he found out she was leaving by watching her video announcement.
“I guess it is in fact over. I’m not sure what I will do - I have no one else to take Amanda’s place and haven’t really ever imagined Rocketboom without her except for the past week as everything has been up in the air. I also have no doubt too that Amanda will go on to do great things, that this is still only the beginning.”

Obviously, that sounds very different than her story. Amanda went to the beach, presumably in Los Angeles, which is revealed to be at the heart of the matter. According to Dave Coustan, Congdon was moving to LA, whether Baron liked it or not (you know, because winter in New York City is only slightly less painful than winter in Chicago). Coustan published an email from Baron with more details:
“Amanda decided she was unable to stay in NYC and informed me, the Rocketboom business and the rest of the team via her videoblog post this morning that she was moving on.
We wanted her to get to Hollywood to pursue her personal opportunities as soon as possible, but her demand to move this week without waiting any longer, without a justification, and without an adequate proposal for a plan for how the show itself would work, we were unable to uproot Rocketboom from NYC at this time. ”

Immediately the blogosphere was abuzz about the news as fans speculated on what happened, even to the extent of theories of a secret romance gone sour, and debated whether or not RocketBoom would survive without her. But the story became especially interesting when Baron announced that he had heard the news the same time as everyone else. Amanda and Rocketboom are both quite popular, so the news will cause a stir amongst the podcast community.

It’s a sharp reversal for Rocketboom. The Web site features a daily three-minute news-like segment that blends popular culture and technology news, delivered with Congdon’s quirky personality to 300,000 viewers. The site drew attention from the mainstream press for its attempt at a new form of online journalism and brought fame to Congdon, who landed an on-camera interview with Sen. And it’s bound to raise questions about the viability of video blogging as a sustainable business. After it emerged online in October, 2004, the daily mock news show became the posterchild for video blogging and its potential to recast what we think of as television.

Congdon made her announcement at her site, Amanda Unboomed. VPN has a transcript of Amanda Congdon’s Rocketboom announcement.
Baron has posted his response to the Yahoo! videoblogging group.
Amanda promised she’d be back posting some “crazy stuff” soon. You can e-mail her at unboomed (at) gmail.com.

Update:
Amanda Congdon has signed with the Endeavor Agency and if you visit Amanda’s site you will see that the Endeavor Agency is now listed as her point of contact.
Meanwhile Dave Winer has spoken to Rocketboom producer Andrew Baron and confirmed that Joanne Colan, the former MTV Europe VJ, will become the interim host of Rocketboom.