Buzvia Blog

I was a huge fan of Revver since I launched my WoodMarvels.com site a little over a year ago which recently hit well over 175 000 animation views (see WoodMarvels.com Video Views Surpass the 165 000 mark!) but my experience with Blip.tv completely creams them in every way! Here is a sample of the animations I upload and below are updates regarding both services.

Revver: A history of problems!

I recently had to update all my old blog articles relating to WoodMarvels.com to replace my Revver embedded animations with those from Blip.tv and I was astonished at how blind I was to all the problems I was having… there was rarely a month that didn’t go by that I didn’t bitch about something being “wrong” with Revver. Here are just a few I was able to find! Just so you know, I have well over 200 videos on Revver and various other online video streaming companies. Keep in mind these are not the only times I had problems, it’s only the times that I noticed them enough to write about them (ei: product launch happened at the same time they were having problems).

WoodMarvels.com Video Views Surpass the 165 000

• Feb 3, 2009: Revver had been down for several days and their stats were not updating (pay or views).
  

Welcoming Tee Smith’s Mozzy Coasters!

• Jan 30, 2009: Things have been very busy here and it seems Revver is down yet again.

WoodMarvels.com is dropping Revver.com for Blip.tv

• Jan 16, 2009: Revver.com has been a great service for WoodMarvels.com but guess what, they are down again! I have had enough!

Keep Revver or Switch to Viddler?

• Nov 13, 2008: Since November, their system has been on the fritz but so far, all the videos they do have of ours do play fine. We just cannot upload any new ones until they get their main site back online.

WoodMarvels.com Project Construction Shots (Updated)

• June 16, 2008: Looks like Revver.com is finally online again though I can’t upload new project animations

New models soon: Revver.com processing errors causing delays

• March 22, 2008: Due to these processing issues on their end, I have had to delay the introduction of some new models…

New Wood Project Plans: Sunshine and Tropical Paradise Portraits

• January 29, 2008: Revver is undergoing some headaches at the moment so we are unable to upload the related animations.

WoodMarvels.com Streaming Wood Project Plan 3D Animations

• January 6, 2008: Ever since the seed behind WoodMarvels.com began to take root, I wanted to stream all the animations for our products online for both clients and guests. The major obstacle to this was bandwidth costs but now, thanks to Revver, WoodMarvels.com can now offer this to everybody (clients and guests alike).

Other issues with Revver

I never joined Revver for the money, it was a bonus as their video quality, at the time I joined, was superior to every other online video provider I could find. They currently owe me money, sure, they did pay me a bit but the frustration of not being able to upload, transcoding erros and even videos going down hasn’t made-up for what little compensation they do give. In my opinion, Revver is a healthy horse stuck in the middle of a desert, slowly stumbling around as it dies from dehydration. There are also multiple reports, true or otherwise, that they are having problems paying their bills… basically, this isn’t a company you want to invest your time or resources in. Videos not loading is one issue, hanging-up pages while their video code keep looking for a server that doesn’t exist is just damn bad management!

Blip.tv update

Since I joined Blip.tv, I have been incredibly impressed by their service. They offer almost realtime flash streaming so once you upload an animation! It’s down to a few minutes on some of my uploads… I uploaded some things to Revver yesterday and guess what, I am still waiting for the transcoding to take place! I also got a message from the management of Blip.tv to help sort-out a few issues I was having, Revver, last time I had issues, also got them solved quickly but I never heard directly from the execs!

Revver $$$ vs Blip.tv $$$

I was making a lot more money off Revver than Blip.tv for some reason for the same number of views, though if you consider Revver not actually PAYING, Blip.tv should have no problem shooting ahead I searched on boards to find-out if others had similar issues and quickly found-out that many people are “hoping” to get paid as that was their prime motivator to use Revver in the first place.

See history of Revver related articles on the Buzvia Blog

Mergers and Acquisitions

Revver had problems before being acquired and once it did, the promise of “better” has only lead to “worse”. I don’t understand what the point of buying a company is just to drive it into the ground.  There is NO excuse for doing this in my opinion… I have run my own companies for over a decade and had several clients go through this process and I would say the success rate is about 50/50 that the company pulls through BETTER. Why? My only guess is that Revver needed a complete recoding of their site as things were falling apart on them… this takes maybe a few months with a dedicated team to get done, I can only guess that that project lead to even worse coding due to a lack of money to finish the project then having to revert back to the original site… it’s the only thing that makes sense to me at this point.

The Bottom Line

Acquire a company to IMPROVE it, not destroy it!

Censoring a blog is a great way of pissing-off your readers!

Maybe I have a different view of the internet than many other sites but I believe that everybody has a voice on my network of blogs, positive or otherwise.

The life cycle of a blog

Birth

When somebody first starts a blog, they are eager to get comments, they “mistakenly” allow everything to go through without moderation and as a result, become full of spam.

Growth

Alright, you got a bit of traffic coming to your site, some commentors begin bugging you, you have a few flame wars and you start to make some money. Great! Most blogs at this point begin down the road that will lead to either their continued growth leading towards real influence or slow demise and it lies in the simple action of censorship.

Influence / Death

Lots of traffic, lots of comments and advertisers giving you a lot of money for essentially doing what you where doing for free when you first started your blog… great! You have become an industry leader and now the specter of censorship begins to play a role. You may fear writing a negative article for fear of pissing-off readers or advertisers, you hesitate allowing comments which don’t share the same view as you or worse, you begin going on a banning spree! Don’t do it!

What brought this up

I have noticed a number of very influential blogs beginning to censor the comments that either I make or that other people’s approved comments begin disappearing completely! What is the result? Well, their influence on me drops significantly and as a result, they will begin to slowly hang themselves.

How about you?

Have you noticed this beginning to happen on some blogs you use to frequent often? One day, your comment is there, the next… gone?

The Bottom Line

Blog censorship is a fantastic way to begin losing what you worked so hard towards achieving!