Rise of the video blog

Rolling Stone: The Rise of the Video Blog. Online video bloggers are redefining the worlds of news and entertainment. (Above, Amanda Congdon on the set of "Rocketboom.")

Nice that Rolling Stone has stumbled upon this strange, exotic, slightly scary new landscape. Excerpt:

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.

Baron, a laid-back thirty-five-year-old who dreamed up Rocketboom two years ago while teaching at New York's Parsons School of Design, says that ever since ATM manufacturer TRM paid $40,000 on eBay for rights to a week of commercial spots at the end of the broadcast, advertisers have been lining up. Considering that Rocketboom's audience has more than doubled since the auction, Baron now believes the show is worth $4 million to $5 million annually in ad revenue. ...