Click here to view the embedded video.

This episode of Traditional Media in Transition features Andrew Michael Baron of Rocketboom, one of the earliest video podcasts.

Rocketboom is a daily international news program, based in New York City, covering a wide range of information and commentary from top news stories to contemporary Internet culture.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Andrew Baron today announced that Joanne Colan was leaving the influential video podcast, after nearly three years with the show:

Today I am so sad to say farewell to Joanne from Rocketboom! Joanne was really, really excellent at what she did here, she will be missed. Keep your eyes open for announcements from Joanne on what’s next for her! And stay tuned for more from Rocketboom…

No announcement has been made regarding who the new host will be, but you might want to keep an eye out for a help wanted ad on Craigslist…..

Professional podcast training event company and publisher The Podcast Academy is “opening the vault” for a week, offering for sale a set of audio recordings of all the sessions, panels, and keynote addresses from the 2006, 2007, and 2008 New Media Expo.

“I decided to offer a historical look at podcasting,” said Podcast Academy editor-in-chief Michael Geoghegan. “I’ve gathered all of the New Media Expo content [of the past three years], plus bonus files from the Podcast Academy.”

The recordings include keynotes, panels, and presentations by a wide ranging cast of new media experts, and include Leo Laporte, Veronica Belmont, Andrew Baron, C.C. Chapman among many others.

Some session recordings are “vintage” ones from pioneers of the podcast industry. “Many of these presentations have not been publicly available for years,” Geoghegan said.

A more comprehensive list is below, after the break.

Session presenters include:

Howard Lindzon of Wallstrip
Leo Laporte of TWIT
Jim Louderback of Revision3
George Wright, VP of Marketing for Will It Blend, Blendtec (2008)
Ron Moore, Executive Producer of Battlestar Galactica
Andrew Michael Baron, Rocketboom
Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt: Developing an Engaged Community (2008)
Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine of Ask A Ninja
Bruce Sharpe – Simple Post-Production Techniques to Get Professional Sound
Rich Harrington – Field Production Strategies for Video Podcasting
Michael Geoghegan – Selling the Unique Value of Your Content
Roxanne Darling – Video Podcasting for Business
Jason Van Orden – How to Generate Buzz and Extend Your Brand with Social Media
Panel – Metrics in New Media: Showing Results and Judging Success
Panel – Music Licensing for Podcasts and New Media – A Crash Course
Alex Lindsay – Behind the Scenes at MacBreak and PixelCorps
Paul Colligan – The 7 Secrets of Monetization
Susan Bratton – Selling Advertising and Sponsorships
Mignon Fogarty – Building a Podcasting Network from the Ground Up

Bonus Podcast Academy presentations from podcast pioneers include:

Doug Kaye
John Furrier
Tim Bourquin
Michael Geoghegan
Greg Cangialosi
C.C. Chapman
Eric Rice
Kristopher Smith
Tony Kahn

The archived presentations from the New Media Expo in 2006 and 2007 are available for $49 for the set. A deluxe set of recordings is $99 and includes the Expo recordings 2006 – 2008, along with workshop sessions from the Podcast Academy. Prices go up each day, and the set will be unavailable after Nov. 5. You can get all the details here.

The Podcast Academy conducts podcast training events and publishes a series of how-to books on podcasting. Several of the Podcast Academy workshops have taken place to dovetail with the New Media Expo, which is a podcasting convention devoted to downloadable, portable and new media.

Michael W. Geoghegan is editor-in-chief of The Podcast Academy, as well as founder and CEO of GigaVox Media, a production, consulting and technology company focused on audio/video new media.

As a pioneer of podcasting, Michael created some of the first corporate podcasts, including efforts by Disney. Michael is also creator of the 2008 James Beard Award-winning “GrapeRadio” and “Reel Reviews: Films Worth Watching”. He is editor-in-chief of the Podcast Academy book series and co-author of Podcast Solutions: The Complete Guide to Podcasting.

How long is four years?

Well, if you’re a child, being four years old makes you old enough to dress yourself, make your own bed, maybe go to preschool. If you’re a Presidential term, four years brings you back to re-election time, or limps to the end of your lame duck phase, depending. If you’re a thirty-year mortgage, four years gets you barely into the principal-paying part of the loan. If you’re in high school, four years is a very long time, waiting to be treated like a grown-up. If you’re a parent of a high school student, four years is quick, a blink of your eye.

In the podcasting space, however, four years is a very long time.

Today marks pioneering video podcast Rocketboom’s fourth birthday. Rocketboom, a daily video blog, launched October 27, 2004, shortly after the term “podcasting” was coined to describe sequential, episodic, subscribe-able, downloadable (audio or video) content. (That is to say, “RSS with enclosures.”)

Topics have ranged from the serious to the ridiculous. 

Over the past four years, many consumers of media have shifted their attention away from the printed page, radio and television, toward blogs and podcasts available on their computers and mobile devices. There’s a lot of great content available, with more new gems being created all the time. Creation of blogs, podcasts, and even entire social networks becomes easier as inexpensive, powerful tools become available to larger numbers of people.

But over the past four years, thousands of podcast series have debuted and “podfaded.” Scores of podcast networks, hosts, services, and products have launched and struggled or fizzled out between the fall of 2004 and today. 

Happy birthday to a new media old-timer.

Rocketboom has announced a big distribution and advertising deal with Sony Pictures, giving the daily video blog exposure and promotion across all of Sony’s IP universe: via PS/3, Bravia TV and Crackle.

We talked with Rocketboom creator Andrew Michael Baron, shown right with host Joanne Colan, about the deal.

“Over the past couple of years, for Rocketboom, we have wondered whether to consider taking on outside investment, outright sale, or some other means of monetizing the brand,” explains Baron. “Part of the terms of the Sony deal are that Sony pays Rocketboom up front, and Rocketboom makes more if Sony happens to make more as a result of their affiliation with us.”

Baron tempers his excitement over the announcement with some concerns. “Of course you worry about the culture class, the big vs small.”

Specifics On The Sony Deal

“Sony will handle all our advertising – if you want to advertise with Rocketboom, talk to Sony. It’s a ’7-figure’ deal that will last ‘for a couple of years, most likely’,” explains Baron. “Sony sees our vision and knows how we want to grow Rocketboom.”

“This takes care of the whole advertising question. We tried and [were not entirely happy with] BlipTV, Federated Media, the do-it-yourself route…” explains Baron. “Our expertise is in the studio and now we can focus on that.”

Andrew says he has some benchmarks in place, so that “if Sony doesn’t end up performing, RB can back out of the dea.l”

Why wait so long to partner with big business?

The split between former Rocketboom host Amanda Congdon and Baron, back in summer 2006, was only resolved earlier this year, according to Baron. Until this was resolved, Rocketboom could not take on investors, enter into partnerships, nor look at acquisitions.

However, says Baron, “It gave me the opportunity to sit back and observe” what was going on in the industry, and look at which business models and which partnerships and which acquisitions worked… and which ones did not.

“Others have the idea right, to seize the opportunity to start new businesses, make new partnerships, forge new networks. It helps to pave the way and create the space, which helps to support other creators who might not be as savvy…”

“Other people [like Next New Networks with their $25million investment] grew too big, too quickly. This business [internet media] is not Tech 2.0. You don’t have to race to be first.”

“Their problem was building something too early, that was too big, and too scattered,” adds Baron. “They had okay stuff — a cartoon show, and a car show, and a show about making special effects. But you can’t leverage the audience from any one of those to watch any of the others. Creating good content can be so expensive, and the ad revenue to support that wasn’t there yet. It was too early.”

On Rocketboom’s Place & Future

“Rocketboom was an early success, but to stay in the game now, we just need to continue to make consistent, quality content. We’re in a good position, time-wise.”

“Our plan is to grow like the [Comedy Central] Daily Show did. At first, Steven Colbert would appear on the show just occasionally, and viewers would clamor for him to do more spots, and the producers would have him back more often.  Eventually, once his popularity and audience was already there, they created The Colbert Report spinoff from the Daily Show.”

“But unlike The Daily Show, which has 19 writers, Rocketboom has one. But, I think you wrote something about, we are looking to hire some additional writers as the Rocketboom grows.”

“We kind of stumbled accidentally on that same idea for [growing] Rocketboom. At the end of the year, we were trying to get some shows together ahead of time, trying to make space so that we could take some time off at the end of the year for vacation.  We created the “Know Your Meme” look back at the year in review. It became so popular with our viewers, and garnered us new viewers, that it can grow into its own regular feature.”

Moving Beyond Being The Poster Child For Vlogging

We asked Baron about how Rocketboom can stay relevant, now that it’s no longer the next new thing.

“The hyperbole of being first out of the gate – well first to get a lot of attention – that was enough in the beginning,” says Baron.

“That wears off after awhile. Three years ago, if you showed up with a video camera and a microphone, people would freak out. As great as it was, I always felt embarrassed at the attention. I’ve just always been trying to make things as good as I can.”

“Of all the things we’ve done, I am proudest of trying hard to do the best we can – writing, visuals, everything.  Our goal, over the long haul, is that, when people think of Rocketboom, they’ll think of integrity, quality and creativity.”

More coverate at TechCrunch, NewTeeVee, SVI

Andrew Baron, creator of New York-based daily video podcast Rocketboom, sent us a note this morning, and asked that we spread the word about some job openings there:

“Rocketboom is expanding its content offerings and looking to hire several writers to join a daily team of writers for the online show. We’re looking for extremely creative, journalistic, funny and clever writers who are plugged into internet culture via daily news, blogs, social networks, video sites with a heavy emphasis on the arts and technology.

http://www.rocketboom.com

Full-time, part-time and contribution based positions available

Please contact jobs at rocketboom dot com with serious inquiries.”

Rocketboom host Joanne Colan is leaving the show, according to a report in Valleywag:

According to a source at the Creative Artists Agency, host Joanne Colan is leaving Rocketboom, one of the Internet’s first prominent news videoblogs. During her tenure, Colan never managed to transform the show (directed by creator Andrew Baron) from a quirky but inscrutable cult favorite into a mainstream online news source. Nor did she achieve the same web fame as her predecessor Amanda Congdon, who left a job with ABCNews.com last year.

If history is any guide, expect show creator Andrew Baron to search for a new host via Craigslist.

Update: Andrew Baron set us straight in the coments – saying that this is just a Valleywag rumor.

Rocketboom founder Andrew Michael Baron has announced that he’s auctioning off his Twitter account:

Baron is effectively wanting to monetize the attention that his Twitter account receives. Per the eBay auction:

The winner of this auction gets my account with all of my followers. The account is in my name now, but the winner of the auction can pick any other name that’s available on Twitter for the transfer. For example, you could have http://www.twitter.com/x where x=any name thats not already taken. You can change it yourself at anytime too, one of the cool features about Twitter settings.

So basically it’s like getting a new account with your own name, but having a pre-installed audience.

It looks like Baron is playing the part of the agent provocateur here – inciting others to disrupt the status quo of social networking.

It’s already generating a lot of discussion – and is sure to generate a lot of cheap publicity for Baron, Rocketboom and the buyer.

No matter what the Twitter account ends up going for, and whether or not Twitter allows the sale to go through, the more interesting question is not what Baron’s Twitter account is worth to someone else, but what the value of Baron’s credibility is, and how the sale will affect it.

Many of Baron’s Twitter followers may be happy to follow Baron to another social network or to follow his posts from his Rocketboom account. On the other hand, the sale is likely to piss off a lot of his followers, who may not just opt out of following him on Twitter, but opt out of following him completely.

When we talked with Rocketboom’s Andrew Baron recently, he cited the idea of creating a spectacle as one of the ways to create great viral video.

“Videos of spectacle translate on the net,” notes Baron, “An idea that is very original and unique, while extreme, can be videotaped and put up on YouTube to get a lot of hits pretty easily.”

As an example, Baron mentioned Improv Anywhere, a NYC flash mob improv troupe that has staged over 70 missions, “creating scenes of chaos and joy in public places.”

“We‚Äôre out to prove that a prank doesn‚Äôt have to involve humiliation or embarrassment,” says Improv Anywhere creator Charlie Todd, “it can simply be about making someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them.”

Improv Anywhere documents their events, and the videos routinely get tens of thousand, hundreds of thousands and even millions of views at YouTube.

Here’s one of their recent spectacles , 101 Shirtless Men At Abercrombie & Fitch:

TechCrunch published a controversial piece of linkbait over the Thanksgiving holiday on the “secret” strategies behind successful viral videos. The essay, by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, suggested that the days of indie video podcasts like Ask A Ninja becoming viral hits through hard work and creativity are gone.

“The Wild West days of Lonely Girl and Ask A Ninja are over,” writes Greenberg. “You simply can‚Äôt expect to post great videos on YouTube and have them go viral on their own.”

Instead, Greenberg argues that the secret of successful Internet videos is “clandestine marketing”:

• Using fake headlines;
• Sending videos, unsolicited, to mailing lists;
• Paying bloggers to pimp the video; and
• Creating multiple fake forum user accounts to hype the video.

We characterize the TechCrunch piece as linkbait because both Greenberg and Mike Arrington, the article’s publisher, have tried to distance themselves it. Arrington, after featuring the article on his site, now says “frankly I‚Äôm disgusted by this.” Greenberg claims that his article was mangled in editing, and that he doesn’t really use all the strategies that he said he uses in the original article.

Because TechCrunch’s viral video secrets article seems to be as much about spamming and linkbaiting as it is about creating viral videos, we thought we’d offer an alternate view – this time from actual viral video experts.

While TechCrunch relied on Greenberg, a guy who says “I can‚Äôt reveal our clients‚Äô names and I can‚Äôt link to the videos we‚Äôve worked on,” we talked to people with solid viral video credentials. People like:

• Andrew Michael Baron – few people have done more to pioneer indie Internet video than Baron, the creator of a little show called Rocketboom.
• Tim Street – creator of French Maid TV and a member of the Association for Downloadable Media advisory board. When it comes to viral video success, French Maid TV’s cup runneth over. The latest episode, How To Share Photos, has racked up over 3.5 million views at YouTube alone. Ooh la la!
• Hayden Black – creator of the hit online series Goodnight Burbank, the show that USA Today called “better than 99% of the stuff on TV,” and Abigails X-Rated Teen Diary, in which he portrays a 13 year-old middle school girl.
• Kent Nichols – creator, along with Douglas Sarine, of the viral video hit to slay all viral video hits, Ask A Ninja. Episodes of Ask A Ninja frequently get more than a million views on YouTube alone.

Here’s what these viral video experts had to say about Greenberg’s article and the real “secrets” of creating viral video hits……

Ask A Ninja’s Kent Nichols Dispatches TechCrunch’s “Secrets”

While Ask A Ninja‘s Kent Nichols, right, isn’t surprised by the tactics hyped by TechCrunch, he’s not impressed, either.

“There’s always going to be unethical bottom feeders that try and game the system,” said Nichols. “They can also just do a page refreshing scheme to get to their prized 100k threshold.”

Nichols had this to say about using Greenberg’s “clandestine marketing” tricks:”The simple fact is that he’s wrong. To build a sustainable hit you have to be good, consistent, and patient,” adds Nichols. “Look at Epic-Fu. They are growing into mainstream-sized numbers and they did it the old fashioned way, with hard work.”

“Another great example is the iPod touch kid (Nick Haley) that got seen by the Apple ad folks, after only 7k views on YouTube.”

Viral Success Takes More Than Tricks

While Greenberg suggests paying bloggers to pimp your videos, Nichols has found that bloggers are glad to feature your video…..if it’s really good.

“People that need to feature new videos are hungry for quality things to share. They have to share and feature things. And they will feature you, if you’re good.”

You can hear more of his thoughts in our interview with Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine.

Rocketboom’s Andrew Michael Baron On Viral Video Success

We asked Andrew Michael Baron, shown right with Rocketboom host Joanne Colan, what he thought about TechCrunch’s viral video secrets.

He called them “Totally ridiculous!”

“This would be similar to a post about how to make it big with spam email or splogs – or dare I say – Mahalo,” said Baron.

“Even when trying to take this seriously, however, the points still fall short of any useful information,” he adds. “I don’t think content is king, per se, but viral videos are dependent on the high value of their content.”

Baron questions whether the viral successes that Greenberg claims can even be considered “viral.”

“100k or 1.5 million views is not classified as viral when paid for, forced and mostly gained by deception. Not only are these practices cheap and slimy, I don’t think they could bring about ROI, which is more of a measurement of success than hit counts.”

Serial Content vs Spectacle

In Baron’s view, there’s more to Internet video success than lies & spam. While the approach popularized by TechCrunch is based on tricking people, Baron’s is based on his understanding of media theory and the state of new media.

Baron explained his ideas on why some videos “go viral”.

“For this discussion, we could identify content that is serial in nature, like Rocketboom, and then one-off memes. Again, just for this discussion, the meme content can come in two kinds: premeditated and accidental.”

“The Miss Teen USA (meme) was accidental,” notes Baron. “The piggyback memes that followed were premeditated.”

“If it’s premeditation memes that you want, and I think that was the intent of the TechCrunch article, then one of the best ways to approach that is the same way you would approach a ‘spectacle’,” said Baron. “Spectacles have long been a means for becoming popular off the net.”

“Videos of spectacle translate on the net. Take the work of David Blaine or the first popular works of Laurie Anderson. These performance artists came up with ideas that were so out there that they would be noticed based on the idea alone. If you go to New York City and suspend yourself from a crane in Times Square for several days, you are going to get some press.”

“An idea that is very original and unique, while extreme, can be videotaped and put up on YouTube to get a lot of hits pretty easily,” adds Baron. As an example, Baron cites Improv Everywhere, a group that has had viral hits with improv spectacles like Slo-Mo Home Depot.

The second part of this article – More Secrets Of Viral Video Hits – features insight from the video gurus behind Goodnight Burbank, Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary and French Maid TV.