Amanda Congdon’s 15 minutes of fame has been extended indefinitely. She’s now video blogging for ABCNews.com. Great move by ABC and good for Amanda.

Her old Rocketboom fans will approve, I think. Stylistically, it’s similar enough and gives Amanda’s quirky personality plenty of room to roam. It’s still webby in its un-TV like willingness to be less polished, seemingly more spontaneous (even if it isn’t) and not try to polish and scrub every joke. The clunkers remain (which helps define the personality and make it more human). Actual production values are probably actually improved (though Rocketboom was pretty darn good in this regard). Her and her producers are opening up the show to a wide range of user participation. Amanda is getting lots of feedback from viewers — mixed reviews (why do people object to the hair flipping? It’s her trademark and she can do it if she wants to, I say).

Nits: The video opens in a pop-up window, which is OK (at least it runs in an embedded Flash player), but from there there is no RSS feed or iTunes link or other subscription options. I’m no fan of preroll, but on longer video preroll might be ok. The main problem here is that the ads are just repurposed TV spots, which means they’re lame, boring and not very webby (and too long).

UPDATE:  Amanda leaves a comment and I respond.  In her comment, she leaves a link to her own blog.  I left my comment before following the link.  A small mistake. She addresses my issues and she’s actually encourage the blogosphere to post criticism about ABCNews.com UI and interaction issues so that ABCNews.com gets the message.  So  I guess I did a useful thing with this post.