Video Sharing Evaluation: Revver - Part 1

If you've been reading this blog you'll know that, for all its problems, we believe www.revver.com to be one of the best video syndication/monetization sites out there. In this first posting we will detail the pros and cons of Revver's website and syndication tools.

Website
The website has some real problems. Its ajax interface is sloppy, slow and may be the doom of the service since it isn't really all that enjoyable entertainment experience. The quality of the actual video playback and its transcoding is quite good, but unlike iTunes and Stage6, Revver doesn't have its own codec technology so video quality is only as good as the uploaded file. After uploading your video it will be in flash and quicktime, and your thumbnails are generated automatically.

The flash player is solid and loads quickly, and is used for video playback on the site. The search functions are pretty basic, as the metadata indexing seems to be weak in general. There are channels, most notably Lonelygirl15, Ask a Ninja, and V Cast Videos from Verzion. User uploads seem to be made into channels automatically, but you search by user not channel. Most noticeably absent from the site is the ability to create a content producer profile, at the vary least they could have a place to promote a link to the producer's website.

Syndication
Syndication is generally Revver's strong point. Even when website service was down during Revver's recent growing pains, our syndicated videos continued to play. Your syndication choices are:

- Flash using Javascript
- Quicktime for Myspace (<EMBED>)
- Flash Embed
- Quicktime using Javascript
- Thumbnail link

These simple cut and paste codes provide much more variety than YouTube, AtomFilms, and Veoh. They are easily modified and allow for syndication without having to delve into Revver's API.

Advertising is delivered with your syndicated content. Just as it does on the site, the ad plays at the end of the video only once ending on a still frame advertisement. The advertising is clean, varied and seems to be converting between 10-50% of the time. We will post details of the revenue sharing service in a second posting.

Certainly Revver is more of a syndication service than a social network. Your videos are screened to ensure copyright and content eligibility, and its player, streaming capability and advertising are clean and robust. Really a great video hosting/syndication service for independent producers, but is unlikely to bring you strong viewership. You will be responsible for promoting your videos on services like the T-Cast Network Channels ( www.comedycaster.com , www.dramacaster.com , www.scificaster.com).