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I Don't Get This
Bob Tedeschi has a story in today's Times business section about how YouTube "celebrities" are being poached by other web video services.
First of all, I have no idea why anyone would want to leave a service that has 30mm unique visitors a month (YouTube) for a service that has 400k uniques a month (Revver).
But more importantly, nobody has to make this choice. Just put your videos everywhere.
There are no exclusives in web video. And even if there were, a web video is just one embed code away from being available everywhere.
That's the whole point of web video.
What am I missing?
February 26, 2007 Venture Capital and Technology | Comments (17)
Comments
1. Easier chance of being "found" in a 400K community than a 30MM community. Big fish, small pond issue.
2. Youtube is getting big and unwieldy to really look for something new
3. I can see the future of the video sites like ABC, NBC, etc. So these guys are looking to sign up the "seinfeld's" of web video so they can get exclusives I think. Nothing stops "seinfeld" from going and working with ABC on a new gig, but NBC got the first hit right
Mukund
Posted by: Mukund Mohan | Feb 26, 2007 9:00:55 AM
I'd guess Revver is offering cash if they go exclusive.
Podshow's trying to do something similar (spending their $24 million of VC money) to get exclusive programming. I'm not sure how well that's working for them. I do know that the podshow site is a total mess.
What YT understands is that it's about having lots of distribution points, not having exclusive content. I'd love to know what percentage of YT views are embeds, as opposed to viewed on the YT site.
Posted by: Erik Schwartz | Feb 26, 2007 9:04:32 AM
This sounds like the same reason that Ze Frank had fought to keep his video blog off YouTube and used Revver instead, because they do revenue share and he has more control over his content. I first read about it from a BusinessWeek article.
Posted by: ack | Feb 26, 2007 10:00:34 AM
I imagine that the attraction of posting to a site like Revver is the $$ per view number (whatever it is). So if you post to both YT and Revver, you only get paid on the views at Revver; your video could be fantastically successful but net you nothing if the "wrong" version goes viral. Putting all your eggs into one basket means that you get paid for each and every view, even if there are fewer of them in total.
Posted by: Kyle S | Feb 26, 2007 10:38:35 AM
I think the posters above hit the nail on the head. This is the classic issue of the "Long Tail" - it's great for the aggregator, but not necessarily great for the content producer.
Posted by: Shannon Russell | Feb 26, 2007 11:27:09 AM
Having worked at a company in the space of monetizing online video content and having worked closely as a partner of Revver, I can say that Fred what you are missing is that EVERY video service allows embedding. Revver just attaches dollar to the embed service for the producer. If you want to make directly from your online video then YouTube is not the answer.
Posted by: Todd Sawicki | Feb 26, 2007 12:14:49 PM
Ubiquity and loyalty are mutually exclusive concepts. Fred is right -- there is no reason to make the choice between services when no service locks you in with a contract. After al, your goal in posting a video is to gain exposure. Why would you voluntarily handicap that goal?
Furthermore, you can and should cater to different audiences. If you videos become very popular on Revver, manage that audience well. But don't forsake YouTube, MetaCafe, etc.
Posted by: Steve Bryant | Feb 26, 2007 2:28:30 PM
Revver and others may not be able to compete on visitors, so they have to find other incentives to attract these people. If YouTube allowed you to monetize your content today, then it probably doesn't make sense. But since they don't, Revver can offer a cut (or in the case a "celebrity", an even bigger cut than they would have otherwise).
When YouTube finally does something about revenue sharing, Revver et al will have to look elsewhere (i.e., offering more "featured" links along the big fish / small pond theme) - but for now, it makes perfect sense.
Posted by: Tim Marman | Feb 26, 2007 2:28:50 PM
Steve, it's presumptuous to say that "your goal in posting a video is to gain exposure". That's certainly *a* goal - but this article is about people who already have exposure on some scale. Revver is offering them the opportunity to monetize that exposure, something YouTube hasn't done yet (or provided a timetable for doing so). The point is the option is there, and the content producer must then decide what is most important to them. Revver et al are banking on some people decided to "cash out".
Posted by: Tim Marman | Feb 26, 2007 3:05:39 PM
I think its simple -- in the end, content is king, and video aggregators are just like TV networks of old -- they want/need hit content.
and unlike linear video distributors (read: TV networks) which aggregate huge audiences for small menus of content, non-linear video distributors like youtube aggregate huge menus of content for tiny audiences. so the latter look huge but dont deliver huge except to themselves (that is, 100MM streams a day dont mean squat when your video is streamed infrequently at best, as the law of averages says the vast majority of videos are, if they are seen at all.)
therefore smart content producers should and apparantly are chasing audiences here they can be aggregated more easily
call it the IPTV Conundrum: the bigger the aggregator the smaller the audiences
Posted by: Grand Egress | Feb 26, 2007 5:22:02 PM
Just because YouTube has so much traffic doesn't mean you as the content creator will. You would certainly get more traffic showcased on Revver than buried on YouTube.
We are dealing with this with our nonprofit clients, who think that posting on YouTube means their video will get viewed. We have to explain that it doesn't work that way, that unless they work the YT community or send a lot of their own list to the video those views won't magically appear.
Posted by: Michael Hoffman | Feb 26, 2007 11:09:23 PM
I post on all those sites, and I've noticed Metacafe actually has the best of both worlds. They have a huge audience, you don't have to be featured in order to do well, and they pay $5 CPM. I've earned a few thousands already, and I've actually had more views on metacafe than youtube. (Not to mention revver).
Posted by: John G. | Feb 27, 2007 7:34:17 AM
I think it was 6 if not 8 years ago I heard someone say:
Why doesn't everybody just use Napster to trade files? You can get everything there, and it's where everyone trades files.
Then the guns of the RIAA shot Napster down.
The smaller venues are poaching to keep content and views up but nowhere near the lion's share as the lawyers start aiming to tear the big companies to shreds with caveats, concessions and payoffs. The little companies that go out and pick good content now will stil have that content and may even have agreements for that content when YouTube has to cave in to the demands of NBC, Comedy Central and HBO.
When the Nostalgia for those old content videos you can't find on YouTube anymore fades, the people who miss those videos might even go to a pay site whose locked down that content to watch them again.
Posted by: Jason | Feb 27, 2007 9:06:28 AM
Revver pays.
Posted by: Mike Abundo | Feb 28, 2007 12:49:07 AM
It seems like the diggnation model is the way to go. Put the content everywhere and use inband mentions, ads, sponsorships as the revenue grab. Walled gardens seem nuts to me in 2007. There's a tidal wave of content producers, and consumers, so if you prevent people from seeing you, you will be forgotten. Amanda who? Go to CBS.com and wait 5 minutes for her to load?
Ps. Fred, I was selecting text in the comment editor to make changes and the answers.com window kept popping up. I didn't enjoy the experience.
Posted by: Tom Fragala | Feb 28, 2007 12:57:14 AM
what is exactly the term "400K" and "30MM" ?
Posted by: omar Aviles | Mar 1, 2007 10:27:53 PM
Fred:
I don't know why these particular creators are leaving YouTube, but there's been a lot of griping about YouTube on the Videoblogging list every since I joined it about six months ago. Complaints include that there's no way to monetize YouTube views, the terms of service are viewed as onerous by some, and the transcoding quality seems to be poor (with no option to use anything other than Flash).
Among those with professional aspirations, the ToS seems to be the biggest issue. YouTube simply claims too many rights over uploaded content, and a lot of these people are prickly about how, where, and when their videos are distributed.
The Videoblogging list isn't a random sample: it tends towards the more serious hobbyists ranging to the semi-pro. Their concerns are going to be different than Joe Camcorder, but they're probably community thought leaders (insofar as there really is such a thing as a "community" among videobloggers).
For what it's worth, Blip.tv seems to be the hosting service of choice among this group.
Posted by: Shivering Timbers | Mar 5, 2007 2:23:29 PM
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