I had not heard much buzz about Rocketboom lately, since Amanda Congdon left earlier this summer. I don’t know what it was like earlier, when Amanda was hosting RocketBoom, but now it seems lame. It’s often like that when you have a winning formula and you don’t understand the formula and change it - that’s kinda what looked like happend.
Also, I do see any advertising on the site - which leads me to a question. If there’s no advertising then how is Rocketboom making any money?
I heard all kinds of stories of what Rocketboom was generating before - and selling ads, but I’m not seeing anything now - so how are they making money? And even if they did sell ads, could it possibly be enough to cover their bandwidth costs and the costs to pay the contributors?
I wonder if it would have made more sense, except for the copyright issues with ownership of video content, were Rocketboom to just YouTube their content instead of trying to own it. The whole model of what they are doing makes less and less sense to me day after day. I guess it’s that way with a lot of new ideas - they all look great at the beginning - but forget it now - I bet Rocketboom lost at least half it’s audience.
In fact, I think they should have Lonelygirl15 doing the hosting instead of Joanne Cohen - nothing against Joanna - I’d just be more interested in seeing LonelyGirl15 there instead. You need someone who was similarly "undiscovered", an "innocent" - even it it’s not really true (as in LonelyGirl15’s case - the whole thing is more or less scripted - but it appears real -and that’s what matters).
Based on Alexa data, which is more accurate for larger trafficked sites, RocketBoom was getting between 5-10 million Pageviews a day from the beginning of 2006 till early July. Then, when Amanda Congdon left Rocketboom, there was a spike of interest for about 2 weeks that generated 3.5 times the normal daily traffic (Rocketboom attracted between 25-37 million pageviews a day). Once viewers saw Joanna, got used to her, pageviews dropped to about half what they were from January to June 06, somewhere between 3 and 5 million pageviews per day.
RocketBoom is not even on the Map with YouTube. In a way, it makes more sense, except for the copyright issues, to just put RocketBoom on YouTube - then what they’re doing now- at least, that’s how it looks to me.
At least, RocketBoom’s content would spread, something it does not do now. Why have people come to your site and host it there if your not getting some advantage out of it….that’s why RocketBoom’s revenue model makes no sense to me. Maybe it’s Angel Investors and silent partners - but is that enough to make a profitable company where there no incoming revenue? I don’t see how.
I think the only positive news here, for Rocketboom’s investors, whomever they are, is that Joanne Colan and Amanda Congdon have about the same amount of citations in the blogosphere now.
