Rocketboom, the daily video blog, is turning over its distribution and ad sales to Sony Pictures Television in return for a seven-figure guarantee plus a share of revenues. Rocketboom will be distributed on Sony’s Crackle video site, as well as across other Sony platforms such as the PS3, PSP, and Bravia I-Link TVs.

Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron says he went with Sony because of Sony’s distribution strengths and the deal allows him to maintain control of the business. (Whereas selling the business to another media buyer, such as WallStrip did to CBS a year ago for $5 million, would have required him to give up his baby). The deal is structured as a distribution and advertising deal, and sounds like it could lead to a closer relationship or outright sale if things go well. But if they don’t, Rocketboom would regain complete control of distribution and ad sales after the contract expires.

Rocketboom’s current distribution through YouTube, iTunes, Tivo, and elsewhere will remain intact. Sony will sell ads across those distribution channels as well. Baron claims more than Rocketboom is watched more than one million times a month across all channels, and sometimes spike to several million views. But as one of the first Web video shows, Rocketboom has always been better at creating videos than at selling ads.

By aligning with a major media company, Rocketboom will be able to expand its reach and Baron will be able to take some money off the table. But Rocketboom will now be seen as a Sony property for all intents and purposes. That is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, Crackle is finally starting to see some growth after going nowhere for a long time. Since April, according to comScore, unique U.S. visitors to Crackle.com has tripled to 3.7 million (compared to 4.5 million U.S. visitors to Veoh.com).

The deal does raise the question, though, of whether Web video startups can thrive as independent entities or require the distribution muscle of a major media company to go mainstream.

Update: In a blog post about the deal, Andrew Baron explains that one reason he went with Sony is that previous ad partnerships with smaller companies didn’t work:

We tried start-up ad companies like Federated Media and blip.tv and refused to go exclusive with anyone for a long term without some kind of guarantee. And no one was ready because no one could sell out our inventory across all of our platforms (e.g. our own video formats plus videos on You-Tube and TiVo, etc.). It tends to require managing multiple accounts and methods and no one has been able to handle selling ads across all of our platforms except us.

He also blames a lawsuit with former Rocketboom anchor Amanda Congdon for tying up the company for two years. While other Web video startups, such as Revison3 and Next New Networks, raised tens of millions of dollars, Rocketboom was “frozen like ice” by the courts.

Amanda Congdon, arguably the first great female star of online video is back with a new show, Sometimesdaily.

Congdon, for those who aren’t familiar with her work, was the original host of Rocketboom who was fired in mysterious circumstances back in December 2006. Congdon appeared briefly in 2007 as a video blogger for ABC with the series “Amanda Accross America” until she parted company with ABC in September 2007.

The new show is billed as “an off-beat, interactive variety show exploring life’s themes through the inquisitive eyes of Amanda Congdon.”

It’s good to see her back, and she’s certainly looking healthy from the video above. I guess she didn’t want to appear in a future episode of online stars, where are they now or something similar.

See also our list of geek chic shows here.

(via NewTeeVee)

How much is a Twitter account with nearly 1,500 followers worth? Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron wants to find out, and launches a publicity stunt that will spark a debate about trust and privacy: He’s selling his Twitter account, including the followers. His explanation for the sale:

I really love my Twitter account but I feel like I haven’t been using it the way I want to. Quite honestly, I feel sorry for all of my followers because they wind up with my tweets in their timelines and I haven’t been able to utilize the medium the way I want to. I also participate in another Twitter account over on Rocketboom so I’m thinking I’ll post more over there and start up a new account to do what I want to do next.

It would be silly to just delete this account I have here, especially if there is someone out there that had like interests and had something to say or wanted to get involved in some relevant conversations. In terms of monetary value, I have no expectations or needs at all so I decided not to put a minimum bid on this. Whatever will be, will be.

At the time of writing the current bid for the account, complete with 1400 followers is $26. [Editor’s Update: The bid is at $1,125 as of 4/13, 9 PM ET). You can follow the auction here.

Twitter, of course, will almost certainly delete the account if a sale occurs (I’d suspend it immediately if I were them). But they may not have considered this possibility when drafting the terms of service or privacy policy – a sale or transfer of an account isn’t specifically prohibited.

The popular daily videoblog Rocketboom is joining online video network blip.tv, which will now host all of Rocketboom’s videos and sell ads for the show. Rocketboom joins a growing crowd of other top videoblogs that can be found on Blip.tv, including Wallstrip, TreeHugger TV, Alive in Baghdad, and Goodnight Burbank. As with most of those shows, the relationship between Rocketboom and blip.tv is not exclusive. For instance, Rocketboom will continue to sell ads on its own site. But the more top-quality shows that blip.tv can sell ads against, the stronger its position becomes in the embryonic world of Web-only video.

With its launch this morning on blip.tv, Rocketboom gains a new sponsor in Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program. And blip.tv is concurrently launching a new ad unit, an Flash-like overlay that can be seen on Quicktime downloads (the kind you get off iTunes). According to blip.tv CEO Mike Hudack, these ads will be viewable on iTunes even though Apple generally prefers the paid-download model to ads. Blip.tv has offered pre-roll and post-roll ads on video downloads for about a year, but this is the first time a mid-clip overlay is available. Overlays, which usually look like a banner that pop up during the video, are preferable because, Hudack tells TechCrunch “pre-rolls have the potential to turn off viewers and post-rolls don’t get watched.” Eventually, blip.tv will have the capability to track how many times each ad is viewed or clicked on as well. Up till now, such metrics have been more common for streaming videos than for downloads.

Videoblogger Ze Frank is in what he calls a nerd fight with Rocketboom producer Andrew Baron. Frank says that Baron’s numbers are inflated and make it difficult for he and other video bloggers to sell advertisements with much lower numbers to offer. I spoke with both of them on the phone, looked at Rocketboom’s traffic logs and ran my understanding of what I saw past several podcasting industry experts who confirmed my analysis.

I think that if Baron is exaggerating, it’s not by very much. I think his rough numbers are more or less accurate. I also think that’s just the beginning of the story.

Baron says that episodes of Rocketboom are downloaded about 300,000 times each. Frank says his show (called “The Show”) has about 30,000 viewers. Rocketboom delivers its show from four different servers, Tivo, iTunes, Hellio mobile phones and all over the web. Viewer numbers and ad impressions are impossible to quantify absolutely, but it appears to me that each show is getting downloaded through verifiable channels between 150 and 200 thousand times.

Are other, non verified by me distribution channels, bringing those numbers close to Baron’s 300,000 claim? I think they are probably coming close enough that Baron’s number can be accepted as generally accurate with a large grain of salt. Ze Frank himself emphasizes that good analytics are just not available in this brand new industry.

In other words, Baron’s show may only be downloaded 7 or 8 times as much often as Frank’s, not ten, but his claims appear to be in the ball park. Heather Green of Business Week’s Blogspotting just posted on this as well and came to just the opposite conclusion of mine but based on the same numbers. The issue here, though, is the ability to sell ads. Whether Rocketboom has 250k downloads or 300k isn’t the issue if Frank has 30k. The point is that Rocketboom may not be strong in some metrics (like pageviews) but when it comes to downloads the show is scoring high. As Green points out, it also shows that the loss of Amanda Congdon did not cause great pain to the number of downloads.

Big Issues

Numbers and money are obviously what pays the rent and thus they are important, but there are many things that matter more than these numbers. The number of downloads does not equal the number of people who actually view the show. The number of people who press play does not equal the number of people who watch long enough to view an ad. Tacked on ads like Revver serves up for Ze Frank are very different from innovative ads like the one based in Second Life that Rocketboom recently did for a rechargeable battery recycling company.

Pageviews are very difficult to track and are close to meaningless anyway, particularly when it comes to multimedia. See this Alexaholic graph, for example, that makes it look like Ze Frank is beating Rocketboom handily and that TechCrunch is much larger than both of them combined. I’ve seen Rocketboom numbers, the show is of general interest and it is everywhere. In fact there is little reason to come to the site if you like watching the show. I believe that they have a larger number of downloaders than we have subscribers and page visitors. Of course we’re a very topic specific site.

What people get out of watching is an other key question. Jeneane Sessum says there needs to be a likability metric and Robert Scoble says we need a way to measure engagement.

Ze Frank viewers leave hundreds of comments, participate in contests, send in clips of themselves and donate money. Comments are far sparser at Rocketboom. My girlfriend once spent all her free time for a week watching every Ze Frank show that’s been made and I laughed out loud after most of them. If I never saw another episode of Rocketboom again that would be ok with me. I like Ze Frank’s content much better.

The fact remains however, that Rocketboom’s content is being downloaded nearly 10 times as often as Frank’s. I accept Andrew Baron’s explanation of that, too. Rocketboom exercises almost zero control over distribution of their show – other than to push it into as many channels as possible. Frank prominently asks his viewers to keep his videos out of sites like YouTube, presumably so he can track the numbers closely. Rocketboom also has first mover’s advantage, is work safe and, as unfair as this may be, plays the attractive woman card.

Ze Frank and many other video podcasters ought to be able to make a living doing what they are doing. The question of numbers is probably one part of what’s slowing advertising spending in the space. The fact that Rocketboom is as well known as it is shouldn’t lead advertisers to believe that every other video blogger’s audience is insignificant. It’s a changed game and it continues to change.

To see more top video blogs, check out the site of the upcoming Vloggies awards.

Amanda Congdon has been forced to leave popular RocketBoom video blog over a disagreement with her partner, Andrew Baron. For details, see the video Amanda recorded and placed on her blog. She says “My partner, Andrew Baron, is no longer interested in being my partner.”

No word yet on who will replace Congdon on the show.

RocketBoom has catapulted itself to success, with 250,000ish daily viewers, distribution via Tivo and $40,000 per week in advertising revenue. It was beginning to rival national cable television shows for audience share.

There is certainly another side to this story – but whatever happened it is an unmitigated disaster for the show. Amanda was RocketBoom. She will certainly go on to continued success. The future of RocketBoom may not be so bright.

TechCrunch has an early profile on RocketBoom from July of 2005.

Update: Andrew Baron has his say on the situatioin (image hosted by Dave Winer), which paints a vastly different picture. Oh and Dave, you are wrong. Listen to the video. Amanda doesn’t say the word “fired”, but she does say words that mean the same thing. The funny thing is, based on what looks like really happened, she’s full of crap. Or both of them are.

Update: I just got off a plane to Europe and things are getting even stupider. I think I’m done with this story.

Company: RocketBoom

Launched:

Located: New York, NY

What is it?

RocketBoom is a very popular Monday through Friday videoblog, or vblog. The segments are short – around 3 -5 minutes (or less) and released weekdays at 9 am EST. RocketBoom is extremely low-budget – “Instead of costing millions of dollars to produce, Rocketboom is created with a consumer-level video camera, a laptop, two lights and a map with no additional overhead or costs” (Link).

In their own words, “Rocketboom is a three minute daily videoblog based in New York City. We cover and create a wide range of information and commentary from top news stories to quirky internet culture. Agenda includes releasing each new clip at 9am EST, Monday through Friday. With a heavy emphasis on international arts, technology and weblog drama, Rocketboom is presented via online video and widely distributed through RSS.” Link

RocketBoom anchorwoman Amanda Congdon is the star of the show. She’s an aspiring actress who the Associated Press says first appeared on NBC’s The Restaurant as a disgruntled coat-check girl.

For an example of one of the “posts”, see here (Topics: nasa tempe1 smashes into comet, rocketboom fireworks, itunes rss video tutorial, akimbo, akimbo review, karl rove leaks c.i.a. names, google video hacked on first day, google distributes pirated videos, skater trainer, music: [1, 2], apple itunes).

Another one, on Tom Cruise (“I’m not gay/scientology tour”)

The site has multiple RSS feeds and currently has approximately 25,000 daily downloads.

Check it out. It’s one of our regular RSS feeds now.

Additional Screen Shots:

Link

Team:
Andrew Baron, creator
Amanda Congdon, anchorwoman
Joshua Kinberg, regular advisor
Frank Lesser, Video editor
Field Correspondents
Link

Links:

RocketBoom
About
Archives
Stats
Bloggers Blog
AP

Tags: rocketboom, vblogs, videoblogs, podcasting, review, profile, techcrunch, web2.0, amandacongdon, RSS