Lisa Nova Staffs Rocketboom's West Coast Desk

Rocketboom was the internet’s first breakout video blog; its steadfast devotion to quirky, quippy coverage of interesting things found nowhere else has kept it thriving since 2004.

Lisa Nova is a YouTube institution. She’s been posting sketch comedy with abundant fanfare since 2006, but I’ve long wondered why this staggering talent has not been applied to a bigger, more collaborative project (on the internet – I’m not counting her stint on Madtv).

Now she is. With what appears to be a value-building collaboration, Lisa Nova will add to Rocketboom’s slow-growing network with two additional episodes each week, says the blog of Rocketboom creator Andrew Baron.

Baron, who has cautiously watched the mistakes of many other video networks, believes that incremental spinoff series are the safest bet for his small startup that recently signed an ad deal with Sony’s Crackle.

But this is not the first time Baron has engaged other talent: correspondents from around the world regularly contribute to Rocketoboom; some, like Epic Fu, have formed their own shows beacause of it. For other correspondents like Ruud Elmdrop and Steve Garfield, Rocketboom has been an opportunity to showcase their existing brands.

For a period, Rocketboom also provided production support to Pop17, a popular daily video blog starring internet famo Sarah Austin. And they’ve played around with a now weekly Know Your Meme series, of which a spinoff starring Rocketboom’s Elspeth may or may not emerge.

Rocketboom has had the leverage to create something bigger much faster, but they’ve taken small, steady steps to ensure the integrity of the content they produce and the longevity of their brand. So far, this strategy seems to have paid.