Steven Starr isn't your average internet CEO.

After all, how often can you hear a guy talk about Advertising, how much he Loves Creative Commons, and the fact that DRM is the Devil, all in the course of 40 minutes?

As i said, not average. Far from it.

In fact Revver is more than a technology company or neat trick to generate Ads for Kevin Nalt's CubeBreak site.

It's a movement. And you know this when an audience of more than 150 filmmakers at the IFP conference listen with rapt attention as Starr preaches the gospel of Creator Empowerment. And you get the sense that he really means it.

Revver 1.0 - launched last week - is hunting big game. The goal is to set a lofty goal for the video content business - and create such a demand for shared revvenues (revv - get it?) that others like YouTube will follow suite. The industry may get there, but for YouTube's Chad Hurley - they're more focused on providing an economic solution to the bigger fish in town - many of whom have made noises like they may be preparing to file suite if YouTube doesn't come up with a payment system for rights-holders pretty darn quick. That leaves the creator payment market wide open right now... and Revver isn't letting any grass grow under its feat.

The new site has a clean look, new flash video, and a widget creation toolset that makes content sharing easier and economic.

This is good news for Magnify.net. As more and more sources of User-Generated Content come into the market, the need to search, organize, and monetize it becomes more acute. (MSN just released SoapBox today).

The event was the IFP "How Creators Can Monetize Content" panel. And I was invited to talk about Magnify.net, and the importance of building creator payment solutions.

While panels can be pretty boring (and i've been in the audience and on the stage at plenty) this on had the energy of change. There was a spirited debate about LonelyGirl15 ("Prank or Art"), the future of music on user-created video (Virgin's Jeff Kempler: "call me!") and a the question about when Kevin Nalts of Cubebreak.com can quit his day job and 'video for food.' (hint: he has four kids - not too soon).

Jeff Howe from Wired Magazine was the moderator - and he really did keep everyone on their toes. At one point he challenged the panel as to why 'low quality' is so much in demand. And i responded that i thought the audience was going for 'authenticity.' Jeff Kemple from Virgin called my answer 'Elitist' and - as i think about it - he's right. Quality has always been a metric i've resisted, since anything that quantifies what the audience likes or doesn't like by it's nature implies a gatekeeper.

To Jeff's point - LonelyGirl15 was wildly popular, and that is more important than and made up destination about high or low quality.

But the important thing that I took away from the panel is just how impressive it is that Revver has created a conversation around Creators - and is laser-beam focused on keeping it that way.

Revver Launch Party w/Steven Starr & Oliver Luckett

Posted to DocuBlogTV on September 20, 2006

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