User created video sharing site Revver has landed an intriguing partnership with a new UK TV station called FameTV. Revver users will be able to opt-in for TV broadcast and those selected will be shown on FameTV. Viewers will vote for their favorites by SMS and revenue sent to Revver will be split 50/50 with the video publishers.
This is the kind of partnership we’ve seen fomenting in previous deals like PodShow’s Sirius broadcasts, the podcast fueled radio station KYOU and Rocketboom on Tivo.
Revver is very 2.0, with post roll still frame ads, revenue splits for publishers, social bookmarking integration and an API. Unfortunately, they’ve had a tough time building the kind of critical mass that YouTube has. Aside from a handful of high profile video series (Ze Frank, Ask a Ninja, Lonelygirl15) there’s not a lot of good content on the network. Perhaps it’s the revenue sharing that brings less authentically creative and more profit driven amateurs to make up the bulk of the content at Revver. I don’t know. A TV partnership may or may not help.
This kind of partnership is in some key ways different from the trend of paying top users. It may be more effective in terms of quality to glean a select few content creators and pay them well than to skim from a large set of content and pay many people only a little. Blogburst (our coverage) appears to be taking the à la carte approach for text content.
Only time will tell which approach will work best. For now though, classic British comedy will face challengers at least larger in number than ever before.
yikes…i checked it out…the name sucks; but its better than youTube; nicer design; fast; and monitized.
i wonder when people will start putting up more ideas for ad revenues. the clickable ads at the end of the tape is decent, but are people clicking? are they targeted?
http://www.engadget.com/2006/1.....ideo-ipod/
Apple will be launching a wireless iPod by Oct 23rd, the 5th Anniversary of iPod.
@michael lambie
Yeah, this is the trick; no one gets paid cause no clicks ads; yet they still get paid for embedding it.
It’ll be really interesting to see how this pans out. I’ve just been watching the tests of Fame TV and it’s different to how I thought it would look - like MTVFlux I guess which just launched here.
As it doesn’t have a music video schedule but the onscreen presence is purely video clips (it’s a 3 by 3 square of clips, plus text numbers and latest votes) I don’t know it’s something you’d sit and watch unless you had sent or were expecting to see something?
Marshall,
You should get this on TechCrunch UK too.
Marshall, this is a good start. I’m also excited up the stuff they have in the pipeline. I’ve been playing with these tools for a while now, and the integration is truly starting to position ZOHO as a viable alternative to the “other” software suite that we currently use.
And yet they still don’t have commenting enabled on their videos?
Don’t they want people to come to their site and browse/comment on videos? Or is the whole focus on embedding the videos into other sites that will provide the platform for comments?
Revver’s lack of content isn’t because it draws revenue-driven creators over authentically creative ones (what does that even mean?).
The “problem” is that Revver is pro-active in terms of copyright. They don’t knowingly allow videos that infringe on copyright to get posted. It’s kind of a must if they’re trying to profit off the content (and they are).
Contrasted with YouTube, which will put up anything and then be *reactive* in terms of copyright. How many different people posted “Lazy Sunday” the day after it aired?
The barrier to entry for Revver is higher. It’s much easier to take some video content (movie footage) and overlay some audio content (popular music) and end up with a wacky movie trailer than it is to create something that doesn’t violate someone’s copyright.
@Dann
this is really true. most people can’t create original content beyond the boring, “lets sit in front of the camera and talk about nothing.”
my company has that problem too; eventhough, we want to make everyone rich; no one gets it that old media is dead….
this revolution, in my view, is about 10 years too early. Most people are boring, do nothing, and just want to be entertained…the whole pro-active generation is, well, just learning…this is why youTube content is so bad; and mostly stolen.
“Aside from a handful of high profile video series (Ze Frank, Ask a Ninja, Lonelygirl15) there’s not a lot of good content on the network”
Are you nuts? Waddya mean, aside from Ze Frank?
AJC, complaining so you don’t have to!
The “problem” with Revver is that it’s a platform, and the average online video user isn’t looking for a platform, wouldn’t recognize one if they found one and would look at you pretty funny once it was explained to them.
The much-mooted “Diet Coke & mentos” cash-in could not be more atypical of the user experience. Users upload videos to Revver and are then left to drive their own traffic. How? Well, you can always email all your friends. Or spam social bookmarking sites “where your stuff will stand out against all the tech stuff”. Yup, very 2.0. Spam your URL in tech forums to drive traffic for your pet trick videos. Nice.
Let’s then say that the average Revver user manages to drive a little traffic. A little traffic isn’t going to drive the kind of click-thru’s that will result in any kind of serious cash. Or much more than pocket change for the average user. It’s a bait and switch, more or less.
Revver is the “affiliate marketing scheme” of online video (remember the new retail world of affiliate marketing on every Geocities website?) A handful of users may generate some decent traffic (and click thru’s are a given on traffic right? no? oh…) The majority will not be funding their kids college education on pet trick videos.
Yup, there’s not a lot of good content on Revver. But be realistic - the issues go beyond that.
From the article:
“Aside from a handful of high profile video series (Ze Frank, Ask a Ninja, Lonelygirl15) there’s not a lot of good content on the network. Perhaps it’s the revenue sharing that brings less authentically creative and more profit driven amateurs to make up the bulk of the content at Revver. I don’t know…”
I think this is a very strange argument. If anything, I would think revenue sharing would attract more, not less qualified video makers.
Would you say then that bloggers who run ads on their sites are also “less creative”?
Perhaps the reason Revver attracts “less authentically creative” video makers is that, as noted, it’s the 2.0 equivalent of “affiliate marketing on your Geocities hopepage”. You put the work in then watch the micropayments be really, really micro.
It may just be that more creative video makers go where the audience is in the hope of being seen, and that isn’t Revver. Micro-fame remains a bigger driving force than micro-payments.
Revver is really leading the pact in creating sustainable business models for content creators. This is so efficient and exctitng..thank goodness at least one of the 200 video sharing sites out there is respecting creator’s rights and compensating them… I see creators making a living off of their work directly without the need for studios.. WELL DONE REVVER!!! KEEP IT UP!
I made $10 in a week by posting to a message board footage of me racing my car around a racetrack. Can I do this every week? No. Is this enough money for me to do it again? Probably not.
Revver is a good idea, but few individuals will be able to scale large enough to make a material amount of money.
They should make it a lottery. Rather than being guaranteed the $10 based on the clicks I got.. I would have been happier if I were entered into a lottery to win $1000 among a pool of 100 others who would have also earned $10 each.
1 in a hundred chance to win $1000.. or guaranteed $10?