Q&A: Revver senior VP Brian McCarthy – Revver for rights

The CamcorderInfo.com Blog got a chance to sneak a few quick questions with Revver Senior Vice President Brian McCarthy about Revver’s plans for this coming year at last week’s CES in Las Vegas, Nev. Revver is the free video sharing platform that unlimited posting of video and compensation for producers when their videos hit it big. Revver splits the revenue 50/50. People who share the content also can earn money of up to 20 percent. One of the most important features of Revver is that the sharing site screens each video to protect the copyrights of the producer.

 

CamcorderInfo.com: Revver is a big proponent of copyrights for video creators. In that regard, what plans does Revver have for 2008?

 

Brian McCarthy: Basically, what we started out doing. Every piece of content that comes in, we review it for copyright. We don’t allow any content that’s not authorized up on our network. In doing that, we a) protect the creators, but b) it also allows us then to advertise that content to share the revenue with the people that either created the content or were licensed to deliver it to us.

 

CCI: What is the review process like? Does someone physically go through each video and view the content?

 

BM: Yes, we have a combination of technology and human bodies. A human reviews every piece of content. There’s certainly technology that supports it as well.

 

CCI: How long does the review process actually take? If I posted a video today, what is the timeframe for when it will be published?

 

BM: It is usually around two hours. We’re working on speeding up that process.

 

CCI: Can users expect that this year?

 

BM: Yes. 

 

CCI: It sounds like Revver plans to focus on protecting copyrights for the end-user [producer]. Site-wise, are there any news site tools in 2008?

 

BM: We are innovating really fast now. We just added comments which we didn’t have on our site before that. Everything we do on Revver.com is incorporated into our platform, so with all of our syndication partners, when we present something new, it’s available to all of our syndication partners as well through our API - so comments, related video, new ad units, we will be moving to building out genre, sites. We’ve got sites that are Revver sites, but specific to a particular category of content – news and politics, maybe male lifestyle, arts and entertainment, things like that.

 

CCI: Who would you say your target audience is?

 

BM: From a viewer standpoint or a creator standpoint?