The site was launched in late 2005, and has since seen a good level of investment, securing $12.7 million in 2006 from investors that include Turner Broadcasting and the venture capital division of Comcast.

Up For Sale

Now, just over a year later, and the company seems to be up for sale, with News.com claiming an asking price of between $300,000 and $500,000, which includes taking on debts thought to total around $1 million.

Former employees are also claiming the company has shed about half of its total staff over the last 18 months. So what has gone wrong?

A Fair Revenue Sharing Deal

The site was once seen as a great alternative to YouTube, and one which offered video producers an opportunity to make revenue, a model which has since been copied by YouTube itself.

The thinking behind the revenue sharing was to try and entice the best producers in, and hope the viewers would follow, but though the site has slowly increased in popularity, it has never reached the levels needed to make it a successful venture.

The core group of producers are happy with the site, and reportedly very loyal, but with debts of $1 million loyal producers is clearly not enough to make money in an increasingly saturated market.

Deals Fallen Through

Revver has looked for buyers in the past, with representatives from Soapbox touring the company premises last year.

Then just last month, LiveUniverse had apparently agreed to acquire the site, but the deal came to nothing, with debt levels thought to be the main sticking point.

For one reason or another, the audience that the company expected, has clearly never materialised. Whilst YouTube has continued to grow to become the most popular site on the Internet.

Conclusions

In November last year, the site underwent a design change, seemingly to make it more user friendly, and more, well YouTube like, in a case of if you can’t beat them, join them.

Despite all good intentions, it seems even joining or to put in another way, copying them, still didn’t work, and this is one video sharing start up which looks to be falling to the unstoppable might of YouTube.

Regular visitors to online video sharing service Revver will notice some major changes now active on the site.

Now, with its new layout and features, Revver is looking more like the most popular video site, YouTube (but with less bold colors), which is currently in the process of being redesigned.

Making much better use of space, the Revver website manages to pack more videos and more information onto the homepage while maintaining a simple and uncluttered arrangement.

Making Revver Easier To Use

Alex Black, community manager at Revver stated:

“We just launched the newest version of Revver.com, and it includes some big improvements and rad new features,”

“…Less empty space, more videos, and the addition of categories and featured sections make it a lot easier to find and enjoy the best of Revver.”

What visitors will not immediately notice is that the entire site is now built on Django, after being completely rewritten by developers, which should help make the service faster and more reliable.

On the Revver homepage, visitors will now see multiple widgets that display top videos such as the ‘Most Watched’ and ‘Editor’s Picks.’ The new categories page resembles this same look, except for the fact that the widgets denote each category. 

At the new video browse page, users will find the ability to organize video listings by most-watched, highest rated, and most commented videos, as well as by date range.

In the user dashboard, visual changes are also present as well as new features. Users can now track their videos by the status throughout the upload and review, use a new one-click video editing feature, as well as make use of the new user-to-user messaging system.

YouTube Like Video Responses

Similar to YouTube, Revver now also features video responses, which allow anyone to upload and post a new video response or turn an existing user video into a response. “We haven’t added moderation to responses yet, but it’s coming, and spammers beware — each video can only be a response to ONE other video.”

In addition to all of this, Revver has even taken the time to offer more to advertisers also, as the site now “offers more opportunities to engage with Revver’s diverse creative and user communities.” 

With Revver 2.0, advertisers can now sponsor video collections such as ‘Most Watched’ or even purchase banner ads on category landing pages (such as Sports) and on the landing pages of content creators.

Kevin Wells, CEO of Revver said:

“With enhanced discovery, viewing, and community-building features, Revver.com 2.0 makes it even easier for content creators and advertisers to engage audiences online,”

“This release extends our commitment to creating the best possible platform for sharing and monetizing high-quality videos effectively.”

Conclusions

Revver has a lot of new changes, and is now visually much better looking than both the current YouTube look and the upcoming redesign. 

Although the two services now have much more in common, Revver is much easier on the eyes and has also long offered better benefits in terms of revenue potential for publishers.

What do you think of Revver 2.0? Is the design too much like YouTube or is this a basic layout to be expected from video services now?

Michael Garrett is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com

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