The Rise of the Video Blog

Online video bloggers are redefining the worlds of news and entertainment

ANDREW M. GOLDSTEIN

On a recent afternoon, Amanda Congdon strides across the set of Rocketboom in green corduroys, furry snow boots and a snug gray T-shirt emblazoned with a cartoon skull. A month before, Congdon had announced on her show, a three-to-five-minute daily video blog -- or vlog -- that she would wear a different T-shirt every day if viewers would send them in. She was deluged. "We've gotten, like, a million," she says, only faintly exaggerating. "Now they all want a mention on Rocketboom, and it's impossible to keep track of who sent what."

The "set" of Rocketboom is in fact producer Andrew Baron's apartment on New York's Upper West Side. Production values are humble, at best: a desk, a chair, a $15,000 Sony HDV video camera and a budget of twenty dollars per day. Despite this, Rocketboom -- a kind of Headline News for the online community, featuring reports on new Web sites, Q&As with technology innovators, whimsical video clips and other ephemera -- is watched by 350,000 people a day. Part of its popularity is attributable to the fact that Congdon, 24, looks like a model (she was one; she hated it) but acts like a girl who'd be perfectly happy discussing the genius of Steve Jobs with her geek fan base.

Rocketboom may be the vanguard in the march of the vlogs, but it's hardly alone. Video-blog monitor Mefeedia.com currently lists more than 6,900 vlogs. And while the vast majority are essentially home videos glorifying children, hobbies and pets, vlogs are beginning to infiltrate the mainstream media, part of the increasingly seismic shift in the way we get our news and entertainment.