Revver puts money where its talent is

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During the late 1970s, Starr booked Bob Marley and the Wailers at the Orpheum Theater in Madison, Wis. There followed two conversations between the men.

"I went there looking for this great musician, but his global consciousness inspired me," said Starr, who is still friends with and an occasional adviser to Rita Marley, Bob's widow.

Working with larger-than-life talents convinced Starr that performers deserve to be compensated. He insists that in today's world, the next Bob Marley or Elvis Presley will most likely be discovered on the Internet. Starr dismisses arguments that the Web is a place for the free exchange of art, and says that anyone wanting entertainers to perform for free is out to exploit them.

"We haven't built (Revver) to satisfy the needs of the free culture people or the corporate media business," Starr said. "We developed this technology to solve the challenges of being the creator in new media."

Revver works like this: A video maker uploads a clip to the site and Revver employees screen the content for any objectionable material, such as pornography or copyright violations. Lacking those, an advertisement is embedded into the video file. Wherever the video appears, it communicates with Revver's servers and the company tracks each time someone clicks on an ad.

According to Martin, the Yankee Group analyst, because each video clip is reviewed by a human, plenty of metadata, or information about the video, can be recorded. This allows advertisers to pinpoint suitable videos for their ads, Martin said. For example, executives from a soft drink company can go to Revver and say they want to attach ads to every clip with twenty-somethings riding skateboards.

They can also specify that they don't want videos that include a rival's product.

Martin likes the technology, but says the problem is that there isn't enough branding to help Revver build a following. The company is nowhere near the top 10 video-sharing sites.

"The positives are that they are syndicating their content so it can be seen tons of places," Martin said. "But if people don't know it's Revver, then they don't know to go there to upload their content."

When it comes to paying for content, Martin expects that other companies will soon follow Revver. Atom Entertainment has paid for content for years, but that was before video sharing mushroomed. Now that Revver has opened the door, it could be hard for competitors to say no.

"I am relatively convinced," Starr said, "that because we started this conversation, we are going to force people to play it our way."

[jeolmeun]

"puts" "Not enough" "money where its talent is"?

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--When it comes to profits, there's no sharing in the video-sharing sector.

[Nalts]

Revver is for Real

I found Revver almost a year ago, and have made thousands from my stupid little clips. The Revver staff is on a mission that's bigger than creating a profitable site and selling it.

Starr is so humble, I'd have never known he's got so many relationships in Hollywood.