Why I support Rocketboom
It's pretty simple. — Rocketboom is bigger than two people. — It plays the role this weblog played in the early days of blogging. It distributes attention to all kinds of creative people doing coooool stuff. Lots of chuckles and lots of bings!
Context & Ripple Effects
Dave Winer's endorsement arrives at a delicate moment for Rocketboom: within weeks of the videoblogging community convening at Vloggercon in June 2006 — where the show was already being described as a viable business — the syndicated confirmation of Joanne Colan signals the show has moved past its founding lineup.
Winer's argument is that Rocketboom matters less as two personalities than as infrastructure: like early weblogs, it distributes attention to creative people who would otherwise go unseen. Coming from one of blogging's founding voices, the framing is an attempt to define what the show is worth as it changes hosts.
First-order effects
- Winer directs his readership's attention toward Rocketboom precisely as it transitions hosts, lending institutional-blog legitimacy to the claim that the franchise outlives its founders.
- Rocketboom's positioning shifts in the discussion from 'video blog with two creators' to attention broker for other creatives — a category with clearer business value, consistent with the viability case made at Vloggercon in June 2006.
Second-order effects
- Other videoblogs competing for sponsor interest now have a benchmark: if Rocketboom's value is its audience's attention rather than its hosts, sponsors can evaluate shows on distribution reach rather than personality attachment.
- Established bloggers gain a template for endorsing successor media — treating newer formats as heirs to the weblog's gatekeeping role rather than rivals to it.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, authority on the web migrates from individual personalities to franchises and formats that aggregate attention — the structural precondition for videoblogs becoming sponsorship-backed businesses rather than hobbyist productions.
The trend: Videoblogging is maturing from personality-driven experiments into durable attention-distribution properties that established bloggers treat as the next rung of participatory media.