San Francisco-based Revision3 which produces more than a dozen Web video series has inked multiple distribution deals in the past two weeks including deals with Joost, TiVo and Hulu according to a story on MediaWeek.
Revision3’s “biggest hit” Diggnation a show that takes a look at the top news stories as voted on by Digg.com users would make Quarterlife look like a runaway hit from a Nielsen perspective, but previously the shows were only available on iTunes, YouTube and Revision3’s own site.
Revision3 is from the same folks who brought you Digg.com (Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose) and pitches itself as “the first media company that gets it” having created “an actual TV network for the Web”. While that may be true, from an eyeballs perspective it’s faring at least 100 times worse than The CW network.
Digg.com is a legitimate and lucrative Internet business that will likely ultimately sell for a lot of cash someday. Revision3 on the other hand doesn’t have the same mass appeal. What it’s #1 show, DiggNation does have however, are 18-34 year old males who buy gadgets. It’s not a bad demographic, but viewership of Diggnation, its best show. seems to be in the range of thousands to tens of thousands. Nowhere near hundreds of thousands and even further away from a million.
Update: see comment from Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback below where he notes that Diggnation routinely draws a couple of hundred thousand views. I’ll try to see what data I can get ahold of, but if that’s the case, considering the scale and expense structure if nothing else I consider the performance vastly superior to that of the CW network.
As I’m older than the target market, my opinion likely doesn’t matter to them, but it’s that the shows are too long for Internet video (Diggnation, for example usually runs about 40 minutes). My attention span for that sort of video generally runs about 5 minutes.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:27 am
We’ve obviously not done a good job explaining to you how many viewers we have, here at Revision3. We routinely get 200,000 or more people watching every Diggnation episode, far more than your thousands or tens of thousands.
But I hear you on short vs. long-form. There’s room for both kinds of shows. That’s why our latest show, Scam School, tops out at about five minutes. Check it out at http://www.scamschool.tv …
And if you’d like to understand our viewership better – we deliver more than 4 million videos a month through our existing channels – let me know.
Jim Louderback, CEO Revision3
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:21 am
Any of those figures yet?
May 19th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Revision3 publishes RSS feeds for all of its shows on multiple video formats, so you can download the shows through any podcatcher you choose, as well as making the episodes available for download through bittorrent and a Revision3 branded Miro player.
Revision3 isnt aiming to produce YouTube style 'Internet video' as you put it, but is taking online distribution of content seriously. “Revision3 is an actual TV network for the web, creating and producing its own original, broadcast quality shows.”
Please do some research next time, maybe even watch some of their content.
It's apparant that Revision3 gets it. You, clearly, do not.