FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
November 29, 2006
YouTube and Revver Join Verizon's VCast
On the heels of yesterday's news that Verizon has bedded YouTube to offer selected YouTube content on its $15 per month VCast video service on mobile phones, reports are surfacing that Verizon has struck a similar exclusive deal with Revver.
The YouTube deal is reportedly for a limited period, which means that if the experiment is successful the other carriers will come courting. The Revver deal is said to be for a period of 12 months.
Revver, unlike YouTube, shares half of the ad revenue generated from users video clips with them. On Revver's site, ads are usually placed at the end of video clips. This won't be the case on Verizon's handsets. Instead, Revver plans to offer uploaders a share in the licensing arrangement, passing on half of the revenue it receives from Verizon.
Though Verizon reports that about 20 million of its customers have phones that could support Vcast, Ovum analyst Roger Entner says only about 10 percent of these phone users have subscribed to VCast. This could all change, of course.
User generated content could be the much needed boost in the arm that mobile video needs to take off. Though the $15 price tag on viewing only a selection of the content, that's available on the Web for free, might not be entirely palatable to consumers.
What do you think, will sites like YouTube and Revver experience as great a success on handsets as on the Web?
Posted by Lynne d Johnson at November 29, 2006 6:26 AM | Category: business development |
1 Comment
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All the data I've found says that consumers really aren't interested in video on their handsets. The only exception is possibly if they're on some sort of transportation where they have time to do it.
Even then the majority of problems connected to it turn off most people. I'm not sure why this type of news is even considered of much interest at this time. It's not really something that's taking off at all.