Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdom have split. While Amanda says that she was fired from Rocketboom, Andrew shares a different version of the story. He says that it was Amanda who decided to leave Rocketboom on her own.
Unlike other good minds, I neither know the real reason behind the split nor want to speculate anything. All I know is that Amanda's relationship with Rocketboom is over.
Amanda was a struggling actor, scanning Craigslist classifieds for a job, until Andrew Baron discovered here. The rest, as we know, is history. Rocketboom went on to become the most popular video show on the internet. They even signed deals with BoingBoing and TiVo.
Amanda was the "hot" face of Rocketboom but did anyone really heard of her before Rocketboom ? She didn't even have a text blog before that.
Amanda was paid a salary by Andrew to "act" on Rocketboom. As her clout grew, she became a partner in Rocketboom with a 49% stake. Her boss Andrew had the remaining 51% stake. Now Amanda will be replaced with another host but the show will still go on though it could dip in the popularity charts.
I think corporates who encourage employees to blog have a lot to learn from this whole episode.
Over time, as employee blogs becomes popular, the employee blogger starts to develop a fan following of his own and not for the company. And one fine day, when he achieves that iconic status in the blogosphere, he may either decide to explore more lucrative options or even become more demanding.
In short, while a company blog can give a more human face to the organization, it may also help the staff blogger find new opportunities which would otherwise remain alien to him. Scoble exit from Microsoft is also another good example of this.