An update to my previous post about Amanda Congdon, the popular star of the video-blog Rocketboom: As I mentioned, I sent an email to Andrew Baron, co-founder of Rocketboom, after the news broke that Amanda was leaving the show (Andrew was on a panel at our mesh conference in May) and he just sent a response in which he suggested that Amanda’s departure was partly her own doing — and also that he found out about it from the video clip on her blog.
According to Andrew, Amanda wanted to move to Los Angeles, but Andrew and the rest of the Rocketboom team wanted her to wait until they figured out how that would affect the show. “Amanda decided she was not able to stay in NYC any longer and informed me, the Rocketboom business and the rest of the team via her videoblog post this morning that she was moving on,” he said in his email to me.
“We wanted her to get to L.A. 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.”
Andrew said that he wishes Amanda well, and that while he is “nervous for the near term because this was an unexpected fork in the road,” he and the team are excited for the future. What that future will hold, Andrew didn’t say, but there seem to be a lot of people who felt Amanda was the main draw for Rocketboom — including Mike Arrington (who says that she *was* Rocketboom and that her leaving is “an unmitigated disaster for the show”) and a lot of commenters on Digg.
Andrew has also posted comments on the Yahoo videoblogging group. And Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc. (now AOL) has offered Amanda a job at Netscape.
Update:
Amanda has posted a lengthy response to Andrew’s version of events, in which she says that the move to L.A. was always in the plan, and that Andrew reneged on their deal and is trying to take her stake in Rocketboom away from her. This one could get worse before it gets better.
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