Revver: A Video-Sharing Site On Pause

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Tech geeks may have developed video-sharing Web sites, but popularity still decides which sites thrive and which sites fade away. Upstart video-site Revver proves that popularity, like love, can't be bought.



If it could, lightly trafficked Revver would be another YouTube-like player in the suddenly overheated video-sharing space where 100 million videos are shown daily and a vibrant user community constantly submits and critiques videos [see BusinessWeek.com, 7/14/06, "YouTube: 100 Million Videos a Day"]. After all, Revver offers one of the best financial deals for video-content providers on the Web.



CLICK REVENUE.

Unlike many sites that do not pay ordinary users for content, Revver splits advertising revenue with anyone who uploads video clips to its site. It does this by appending pay-per-click advertisements to the end of submitted clips. When the ads are clicked, Revver takes 50% of the revenue and sends a check for 50% to the video creator.



In theory, the system creates a strong financial incentive for users to submit quality videos capable of attracting large audiences and, subsequently, ad clicks. However, video producers are not biting. On a recent visit to the two-year-old site, there were only 21,106 videos in a database, according to a ticker at the top of the site. YouTube, by comparison, has roughly 70 million [see BusinessWeek.com, 8/03/06, "YouTube: Entertainment for Everyone"].



And of the videos that Revver does have, few are entertaining or informative, and they often tend to come from the same batch of contributors.



There is someone by the name of "darkzone" who frequently submits videos of his thoroughly adorable, though not all that incredible, toddler. The little girl does what one-year-olds do: She plays in the park, tries in vain to walk around the house, and yells into a pretend phone with the enthusiasm of someone just learning that sounds communicate noise and intentions. Great material if you're in darkzone's immediately family, but that's not exactly the demographic advertisers are looking for.



FOOT FETISH.

Darkzone's baby and his pets, which are also all over the site, are at least cute and not sleazy like some of the other videos. On a recent day, there was clip after clip of different guys getting into a big red bed with three scantily clad women armed with feather pillows.



To some, that might sound interesting, albeit pornographic. For me, the videos were painfully embarrassing 15-second clips of different schmoes getting bonked on the noggin while looking frustrated that a disembodied director would not allow them to fight back. One guy even said at the end, "That's lame."



Lame indeed. During my time on Revver I stumbled upon a foot-fetish video, a man smearing peanut butter onto his hairy stomach, and a video of someone at Revver giving a tour of the company headquarters. There was, however, an entertaining video in the editor's-picks section called "The Revver Interns" in which a man orders around kids all seemingly under age seven. At one point, one of the kids is picking his nose, and the man asks, "Are you picking me a winner?" At another point, the kids get into a shouting match about sales. It was a cute concept that led the video to receive nearly 600 views. Many other clips had far less.



Revver's problem is twofold: It needs to attract more content that people want to watch and then direct user attention to that content. The recent-updates section is filled with poor quality clips and the editor's-picks group is hit or miss. The most watched category, which features the 100 videos with hits ranging from a few hundred to several thousand, is better at showing quality. But, even there, many users still rate the clips three out of five stars.



BIGGER TALENT POOL.

To solve its problem, Revver needs a bigger audience to submit, watch, and rate videos. That way, the most-watched category will have more variety, and users will be able to find higher quality videos there, which would garner better ratings. More clips would also keep the recent-updates section dynamic, preventing individual submitters from dominating the space for the day.



Offering to split advertising revenue is apparently not enough to attract the needed audience. This could be because not enough people are clicking on the ads to make submitting videos very lucrative. Unfortunately, the success of social networking sites shows that one of the biggest ways to attract an audience is to have an audience that talks about the site and likes it and recommends it to friends. Revver needs to do something to get people talking about it positively.