Revver on the skidds?

CNET and NewTeeVee say the pioneering vid-sharing site Revver has been trying to sell itself -- with no takers so far. Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee writes:

Public traffic measurers show Revver with flat growth, though the company sees quite a lot of views in its embedded players, which aren’t typically measured. The company hasn’t figured into anyone’s top 10 video sites by traffic in quite a while. We’d reported on video stars who have moved off the Revver platform as their primary host, such as Ze Frank, who left for blip.tv; Ask a Ninja, which chose Castfire; and Lonelygirl15, which went back to promoting its YouTube clips.

Revver's big differentiator in the early days was that it was the first site to share advertising revenue with creators...remember the Mentos and Diet Coke duo?

IMAX's Digital Plans ... Shorts on iTunes

- IMAX Corp. has started to say more about its plans for a ginormous digital projection system to serve the world's 290 IMAX theaters. From the press release:

[IMAX has] moved up the launch date of its digital projection system in development to the second quarter of 2008 from its previously announced timeframe of the end of 2008 to mid 2009. The highly anticipated IMAX(R) digital projection system will further enhance The IMAX Experience(R) and help to drive profitability for studios, exhibitors and IMAX(R) theatres by virtually eliminating the need for film prints, increasing program flexibility and ultimately increasing the number of movies shown on IMAX screens.

Under the current roll-out schedule, the Company anticipates that three digital IMAX prototypes will be installed during the second quarter of 2008. Shortly thereafter, IMAX expects to install three additional prototypes. Once these prototypes meet performance specifications, IMAX expects to proceed with a full rollout during the second half of the third quarter and in the fourth quarter of 2008.

No word on who IMAX is working with as partners ... I suspect this is not all technology developed in-house. In a survey IMAX conducted, 46 percent of respondents said they preferrred the digital IMAX projection to film.

- The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece about how iTunes and Web sites are fueling new interest in short films. It focuses on Tiffany Shlain ('The Tribe'), Jon Bloom ('Overnight Sensation'), and Jesus Beltran ('The Grass Grows Green'), among others. From Joe Garofoli's piece:

Creators of short films (40 minutes or less) have finally found an audience through such online sites as iTunes, Revver.com and San Francisco's Frameline Films and Caachi.com, which specializes in distributing independent films. And those sites are even starting to bring a revenue trickle to older shorts that audiences are unearthing online.

Shorts haven't had this kind of exposure since before 1950, when pre-TV-owning audiences saw shorts on the same bill with features and newsreels at the local movie theater. Now, when Oscar viewers hear about a handful of really cool-sounding short films that screen at one the world's 5,000 film festivals, they can actually see them.

"We are at the beginning of a transitional moment" in the short-film industry, said David Straus, CEO and co-founder of Withoutabox.com, an 8-year-old Los Angeles outfit that has helped 150,000 independent filmmakers market their films using the Internet. "It's not just that people can download them and see films online, it's that filmmakers are learning what they can do to reach out to audiences themselves."

Beltran says he has made "a couple thousand dollars" over a few months of having his film up on iTunes. (To clarify an earlier post, Mediastile is handling the distribution of 'The Tribe' on iTunes.)

Viewing Video on Cell Phones Gets Easier (and Cheaper) .... New Ad Model for Revver

Here's a Wall Street Journal video that shows how MyWaves.com allows users to get short videos onto their phones -- without subscribing to a separate service like MobiTV:

The story is here. From the piece:

MyWaves Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., is one of a flurry of start-ups offering new ways to access Internet videos on cellphones, hoping to overcome barriers that have prevented mobile video from taking off in the past.

For years, cellular carriers including Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. have offered licensed video content for cellphones, such as sports highlights, TV shows and music videos. But these services, which carry monthly subscription fees, offer limited content programmed by the carrier and usually work only on certain phones. Adoption has been slow.

Now, the new services are taking a different approach, allowing users to view a wider array of Internet video clips -- without locking themselves into a subscription and without purchasing a fancier phone. The services each operate slightly differently, but users can view online videos using any standard video-enabled phone. Videos can be wirelessly downloaded to a handset for viewing later, or sometimes streamed over cellular networks to be watched in real time.

...Some new offerings say they have attracted nearly a million users and are attracting tens of thousands more a day.

In other news....Revver says it will let video creators put ads at the start or the end of their videos, and earn money not based on clicks (as Revver has done in the past) but on how many times the ad was shown. Revver's CEO says the ads could command about $20 per thousand impressions -- money that'd be split 50/50 with the creator.

Here's the Adweek story.

Video Spam a Growing Problem ... LA Times on Viacom's Motives ... and ShoWest News

- The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a piece headlined, 'Spam Hits Video Sites, Misleading Web Viewers.' Spammers upload videos to advertise a product, but then describe them as something else entirely -- like Paris Hilton in the buff. Sites like AOL say they've noticed an increase in the past six months. Kevin Delaney writes:

or spammers, there may soon be a clear economic incentive to post bogus videos: More video sites may start sharing ad revenue with the people who upload videos. For example, spammers could be paid each time someone viewed a video they posted or clicked on an ad accompanying their clip. YouTube executives have said they might share revenue with individuals in that way eventually.

Such an approach could encourage spammers to increase the use of false pretenses to draw users. But Revver Inc., a site that already pays people when ads accompanying their clips are clicked, says video spam submitted to it has actually dropped over the past year. It says its employees review each clip before putting it up on the site.

- The LA Times says that Viacom's suit against YouTube is all about money and control. Most interesting quote is at the very end:

Viacom CEO Philippe P. Dauman said his company went to court to enforce its copyrights and protect its valuable brands, such as MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. That doesn't mean Viacom won't one day strike a deal with YouTube. "Certainly, Dauman said, "we could find ways to operate in a YouTube environment that would be compatible with our brands."

- Sharon Waxman of the NY Times reports from ShoWest. She notes:

Exhibitors have ... not rushed to install digital projectors in their theaters, an expensive process whose cost they are sharing with Hollywood studios. After years of discussions with manufacturers, there are now 2,300 screens across the country with digital projectors, still a small fraction of the nation’s 37,000. The higher-quality equipment is not expected to be widely installed until 2009, when a few high-profile movies in 3D requiring digital projection (like James Cameron’s “Avatar”) are scheduled for release.

New Edition of 'The Future of Web Video' is Out

Just wrapped up a major update to my book, 'The Future of Web Video,' barely in time for the South by Southwest Film Festival, and some other fun events I'll be involved with this spring.

What's new? There's updated info about the iTunes Store slowly opening to independent content and YouTube's plans to start sharing revenue with creators; updated stats and forecasts; changes to the overview of sites that help indie producers make money; and new interviews with Metacafe co-founder Arik Czerniak, filmmaker Lance Weiler, and Kent Nichols, the co-creator of the popular "Ask a Ninja" video series. If you don't have a copy yet, either in annotatable paperback form or as a bevvy of fast-downloading digital bits, now's the time.

The new table of contents is below.

Table of Contents

Tuning in to the Future of Web Video

Web Video: Opportunities and Challenges (Chart)

> The Revenue Equation

Getting Paid: Sites that Help Indie Producers Make Money (Chart)

Perspective: Steven Starr, Co-founder and CEO, Revver

Perspective: Arik Czerniak, Co-Founder, Metacafe

Perspective: Kent Nichols, Co-Creator, "Ask a Ninja"

> Going Viral

Perspective: JibJab Media Co-Founder Gregg Spiridellis

Perspective: Fritz Grobe, Co-Founder of Eepybird and Co-Creator of “Extreme Mentos and Diet Coke Experiments”

Conversation: “Evolution of Dance” creator Judson Laipply

Perspective: Ahree Lee, Experimental Video Artist

> Beyond the PC

Web Video on TV: Reaching the Couch Potato Audience (Chart)

Perspective: Jeremy Allaire, Founder and CEO, Brightcove

Conversation: Jim Barton, Co-Founder and CTO, TiVo

Perspective: Shawn Strickland, Vice President, Verizon FiOS TV

Can You See Me Now? Crossing the Cellular Chasm

> Movies

Perspective: Waterborne director Ben Rekhi on Web Feature Films

Conversation: Writer-Director Lance Weiler

Perspective: Joe Swanberg, Independent Film Director

Conversation: Jonathan Rothbart and Stuart Maschwitz, Co-Founders of The Orphanage

> Advertising

Conversation: Steve Hayden, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

Conversation: Jeff Lanctot, Vice President, Avenue A | Razorfish

Conversation: Andrew Robertson, CEO of BBDO Worldwide

Perspective: Jamie Tedford, SVP of Marketing and Media Innovation, Arnold Worldwide

> Data and Predictions

Surveys, Stats, and Forecasts
- Advertising
- Discovery
- Mobile video
- Payment
- Sharing
- Viewing habits
- Atom Entertainment's 15 Most Popular Videos of All Time

Visions of What’s Ahead
- Viral video
- Playing Web video on television
- Amateur vs. professional content
- High-def
- Piracy
- Advertising, measurement, and tracking
- Transitions and transformations

> Back Matter

Glossary

Recommended Reading

Blogs and Other Resources

Author Bio

A Note on Sources

ToonBreak: New Site for Indie Animators

Shawn McInerney, an animator and the founder of ToonBreak.com, e-mailed me yesterday to clue me in on the site's launch. (It went up last Monday.) Here's how he describes it:

...ToonBreak is unique in that provides multiple tools for animators to generate revenue. Animators can earn money through merchandising, video ads, text ads, banner ads, and donations. All of this is currently done through third party systems such as Revver, Google Adsense, PayPal Donations, and links the animators' online stores. ToonBreak's deal is non-exclusive, and does not seek rights beyond those needed to show and generate revenue from the videos.

Shawn says that about 26 animators have work up on the site. On how payment works, he explains:

- I use Revver as my video host. Revver pays the animators their share of the video ad revenue.

- I link to the animators' PayPal donation accounts, if they want. 100% of this revenue goes to the animators. Payments are handled by PayPal.

- I links to the animators' online stores, if they want. 100% of this revenue goes to the animators.

- I use the animators' Google Adsense account codes, if they want. 100% of this revenue goes to the animators if they send me their code. Otherwise I use my own Adsense account codes and keep this revenue.

It's a cool idea, a sort of second-generation video site, which uses tools from other sites to host the video and ensure that creators get paid.

Here's a bit of background about Shawn, who has worked for Sony Pictures, Electronic Arts, and Will Vinton Studios.