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July 6, 2006
The Rocketboom Saga Overtakes the Blogosphere
It's been a surreal 36 hours since Amanda went public with her departure from Rocketboom. The entire blogosphere seems to be totally absorbed by the saga; as of this afternoon, it was the #1 blogging topic according to both BlogPulse and Technorati. Even mainstream media is following the tit-for-tat exchanges between Amanda and Andrew, from BusinessWeek to the Washington Post.
They say any publicity is good publicity; frankly, we'll just have to see about that. Amanda, clearly, is going to have a very soft landing, with public offers from Jason Calcanis and others for sweet deals that would land her in LA, just where she wants to be. Meanwhile, there's a lot of speculation that this spells the end of Rocketboom, but I wouldn't sell Andrew short. He's working like a maniac to line up an interim host. I just saw the resume and photos of one of the leading candidates. For those people who watch Rocketboom just to see a pretty face, she'd fit the bill, but the big challenge will be to find some who was as witty and entertaining as Amanda. Frankly, I'm worried there's some public pressure to turn this into a quest for the "hottest" replacement. But the key thing will be to find someone who's funny as hell and has a distinct personality that can keep people coming back for more. I'd hate to see an Amanda doppleganger. Heck, I'd almost rather preview the candidates by listening to a podcast of their reel rather than seeing them.
Meanwhile, I've been fascinated by the goings-on over at Wikipedia, where people have been editing the entries for Amanda and Rocketboom. For a while there was an attempt by some Wikipedians to merge the two entries together, but that's pretty much a moot point now. What's most interesting to me is watching the Wikipedians try to figure out just what to post on the entries about the break-up. Given Wikipedia's strong desire to convey a neutral point of view and cite primary sources, it's hard for them to glean the "truth" out of the various public statements made by both Amanda and Andrew. Lots of other websites have struggled with this as well. When it comes down to it, unless someone decides to post the long stream of stressed out, ugly emails that flew around the Rocketboom correspondents list over the last couple weeks, it'll be hard to do that. If that did happen, even if it came directly from Amanda or Andrew, what you'd end up with are two very distinct opinions of what actually happened. This already seems to be happening; Amanda's last blog post was a copy of an email she sent to the correspondents list, in response to a previous message sent to everyone from Andrew. This could turn into an email arms race, with Andrew and Amanda publishing the several dozen emails that went back and forth over the last two weeks. Boy, I hope not.
Which one of their stories is more accurate? You might as well split the difference, since it seems there's truth and sincerity behind each of their perspectives. Even having followed the back-and-forth emails, I feel I'll never really know exactly what happened, because each of them believes very strongly that their explanation is the true explanation. Neither of them are lying as a face-saving public stratagem. It's just what each of them truly believes what happened. But it boils down to high pressure, limited resources, creative differences and personality differences. Like Chuck Olsen wrote on his blog yesterday, "Lack of money certainly doesn't help most relationships."
As I've said already, I'm really sad it came down to this. Watching the fight take place semi-privately was ackward and painful, not unlike a kid watching his parents self-destruct along the downward slope of their marriage. I'd hoped it wouldn't have spilled out so publicly, for both of their sakes. But that's what's happening, and the blogosphere seems riveted, in a rubbernecking-a-car-accident kinda way.
Eventually, all of this will blow over. Amanda's left coast career will skyrocket, and Andrew will continue to be the pioneering entrepreneur he is. Until then, the soap opera continues.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at July 6, 2006 6:23 PM
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