Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 9:22 AM PT

Report: Revver Asking For $500,000 to Sell

Revver is looking to sell itself for between $300,000 and $500,000, plus the assumption of some $1 million in debt, CNET reported today, citing unnamed sources. CNET also repeats Contentinople’s report that LiveUniverse was looking to buy the company, saying that the deal fell through. Revver had raised $12.7 million from Comcast, Turner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards and William Randolph Hearst III, but hasn’t raised any new money (that we know of) since the summer of 2006.

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, which gained a lot of goodwill early on for being the first video-sharing site to split revenue with creators, has been seen as being in dire straits for some time, after having lost two of its founders and its founding CEO in December 2006 and June 2007, respectively. The company was also notably blocked by MySpace for commercial activity way before the social network opened up its platform to outside developers (which was yesterday). CNET reports today “the company’s staff has dwindled to less than half the size it was 18 months ago, according to former employees.”

I have to say, the more I think about it, the asking price seems so very low for what Revver has built. Every race has a loser, but it would still be a shame. Revver’s VP of marketing and content, Angela Wilson Gyetvan, declined to comment to both CNET and NewTeeVee.

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Topic: Money & Power, Startups

Comments (4)

wow, not sure if i should buy revver or remodel my pantry. i think i’ll remodel my pantry

no surprise — 11:51 AM on February 6, 2008 Reply
Poor leadership + no feasible business model, + no traffic = no surprise company has failed

SanFranGuru — 5:50 PM on February 6, 2008 Reply
I love revver, they have THE BEST video player online… It’s too bad that they are faltering.

RevMeUp — 10:30 PM on February 6, 2008 Reply
This is bad news. We respect and admire Revver and look at them as a brother in the revenue sharing UGC/Indie content space.

They lost some big names, and internal talent. But there is still value here. Niche content sites need to get leaner and lower the burn rate in order to be sustainable. But with the global reach of the web, niche destinations can survive.

Brian Andrews — 5:04 AM on February 7, 2008 Reply

Linkbacks (5)

[...] I was a fan of Revver’s model early on, because I thought it made sense to compensate video artists whose clips drove a lot of traffic to the site. Among the beneficiaries of this model were video artists such as the Eepybird team (the guys behind the Diet Coke and Mentos videos) and the Lonelygirl15 project, as well as a range of other artists, including the Ask A Ninja guys and the creators of the “Will It Blend” videos. Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee has more background on Revver. [...]

Want to buy a video-sharing site? - - mathewingram… — 9:43 AM on February 6, 2008
[...] Revver выставил себя на продажу, лишний раз подчеркнув, что делать видео-проект в [...]

alexmoskalyuk » Blog Archive »… — 12:30 PM on February 6, 2008
[...] Report: Revver Asking For $500,000 to Sell – NewTeeVee Revver is looking to sell itself for between $300,000 and $500,000, plus the assumption of some $1 million in debt, CNET reported today, citing unnamed sources. CNET also repeats Contentinople’s report that LiveUniverse was looking to buy the company, saying that the deal fell through. Revver had raised $12.7 million from Comcast, Turner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards and William Randolph Hearst III, but hasn’t raised any new money (that we know of) since the summer of 2006. [...]

Report: Revver Asking For $500,000 to Sell — 10:06 AM on February 12, 2008
[...] last night for a price “many multiples more” than the $500,000 to $1.5 million reported recently, according to a source close to the [...]

LiveUniverse Buys Revver for More than a… — 1:29 PM on February 14, 2008
[...] reported by many other sites, Revver is for [...]

Internet TV Blog » Blog Archive »… — 1:34 PM on February 14, 2008