RizWords Weekly Roundup

I'm going to try to highlight a few things from the show this week that I think warrant further discussion. This may or may not become a regular feature. We'll see how you guys like it.

gPhone
Do I really need to say more about this? Check Episode 116 of RizWords (you may need to subscribe to the feed to listen). Also read these two posts. The second one contains links to other interesting coverage. Or just Google gPhone. Everyone's got an opinion now.

Two Unfortunate Investments (originals: here and here).
On Thursday we talked about VC put into startups Veveo.TV and Wis.dm. Both Art and I puzzled over the amount of money flowing into these two losers.

Wis.dm is basically an expanded form of the comments features on every website on the web, but tries to be the newest Web 2.0 to pull wisdom from the crowds. On Wednesday and Friday, I inaccurately referenced from memory the anecdote of Sir Francis Galton, who was from the 19th century, not the 17th, as I said. The anecdote itself was properly related, though, which can be found in his Wikipedia entry:

[T]he crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the butchered or the "slaughtered and dressed" weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox's true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts).

The example by which the term is defined dictates that yes or no questions aren't going to be the type of questions that the crowd displays it's wisdom, and I can't think of many other instances where a comment form is worth $9 Million in development time. My question: "Where's the beef?"

Similarly, Veveo is a puzzling investment, weighing in at between $14-28 Million. Veveo promises to index videos, making them searchable. Their big selling point? An autocomplete feature.

As we mentioned on the show, we sincerely hope these aren't signs of the end times (in terms of our current tech boom cycle). I certainly remember similarly stupid investments last time around. Either there are some highly charismatic PR folks at these firms, or there are some highly stupid investors over at the VC firms of Matrix Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, OmniCapital Group. I'm not familiar with the staffs of any of the companies (the startups nor the VC firms), so I really couldn't say. The type of money these firms are doling out though (North Bridge Venture Partners in particular), it's worth coming up with some worthless ideas, getting a Web2.0 design job done, and trying to get a zillion in VC.

I'm game, anyone wanna join me?

Digg's Very Prominent New Media Failure
A front page story over at Digg.com Friday morning was a something we covered on Episode 120: Homophobia Inc: Message of Hate Raises Hundreds of Millions of Dollars.

The type of story we love more than most others at RizWords is a story exposing Old Media screw-ups. What we hate is when a prominent New Media source like Kevin Rose's Digg promotes to the front page a piece of pseudo-journalism full of not only factually incorrect but borderline libelous content.

The piece prints falsehoods that could be discounted by doing only cursory research, alleging that the non-profits Christian Broadcasting Network, Focus on the Family, and Family Research Council devote the entirety of their organisations' energy into anti-gay agenda. Give those sites a cursory glance. Clearly they have other focus than just talking about their moral take on homosexuality (which, by the way, is a far cry from being hate-speech or homophobic).

Art and I both attempted to comment dissenting views on the forms, and within seconds, both our comments were buried.

My point being, the failure isn't the blogosphere. There will always be moronic drivel in the blogosphere. The failure is in Kevin's algorithm. The tripe was promoted to the front page before the Digg count reached 100. For better or for worse, Digg is a major New Media news source. If they want to avoid the fate of Dan Rather and CBS News, they should look at changing the system before more people realized how game-able Digg is.

Facebook: You Can't Look The Other Way Anymore
I did a blog post on the business side of the Facebook API, which has been covered on the show several times. The type of money trading in this space can't be ignored, and neither can the ease of entry. This week, not only was it revealed that Facebook wanted to get serious about good applications, but it was also revealed that Bill Gates is a Facebook user, as well as many other prominent Microsoft executives.

This isn't surprising to those of us who listen to Ken or Scoble, but with news like this coming out, it is getting hard to keep up thinking of reasons to stick around that ol' trailer park... especially in light of the way they like to beat up on the tenants.

That's about all the news that's fit to discuss. Any questions? Comment or email!

/rizzn

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Friday Wrap-Up

Hey, Rizzn-ites.

It's been an odd week for us here at Studio.Rizzn. It would appear that the gPhone story has knocked us onto a lot of people's radars. There are actually enough people posting here to warrant a bit more attention from me to my blog. I know I've broken this promise many times in the past, but I'll be posting a bit more often around here.

And in the spirit of wrapping up the gPhone rumors, I'll put in writing here what I've been trying to put out on the show the last couple of days...

I got a call from my friend over at Google (the guy everyone calls 'Deep Throat'), and he told me that "oops, yeah, um, I should have told you that stuff off-the-record, or not at all, because that demo I was talking about? yeah, it was a private demo, not a public one. Sorry!"

On the up side, though, he's not fired.

On a similar note, I've finally contacted my old buddy at HTC to try to confirm the rumors CG started about them doing the hardware for the gPhone. Unfortunately, by the time I called him, the lockdown had already initiated. I know the fellow pretty well, so it was unusual for him to be so tightlipped. His exact quotes were "I know nothing," and "I know only what I read on blogs." This can be interpreted so many different ways, I'm not even going to try to extrapolate.

Mostly, though, I surmise that very possibly the CrunchGear story is correct. Nothing in there directly contradicts anything I've heard.

So, for the moment, my contacts trail on this story has dried up, and I don't expect anything else from my trusted sources until a release date comes up or something else like gColdFusion is released (and no, that's not an actual rumor I've heard, just so that quote doesn't get taken out of context).

I would have put this out on the show Thursday or Friday, but Art and I have been absolutely plagued with technical issues, as we try different new recording techniques to bridge the 100 mile gap between our studios. There should be a late release of Friday's show, but Thursday's show was mangled in post-production beyond all recognition, and was scrapped.

Also, long-time and n3wb Rizzn-ites will be pleased to know I'm killing the green layouts very soon. I'm talking to Ryan at 3DegreeMedia to get a better design going. As I've become more entrenched in programming these last several years, my design skills have almost completely atrophied (and I used to be quite good). So coming very soon, a site that won't make your eyes bleed!

And that's a good thing!

You have a tech rumor for me? Something for me to track down? E-Mail me, and I'll find out. Until Monday (when we are broadcasting the show), deuce!

/rizzn

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Facebook API Programming: the Business Side

Hey Rizzn-ites,

As I've mentioned several times on the show, I was simply amazed at how easy it is to create Facebook applications using the same tried and true backend web technologies we web programmers all use day-to-day. So, you know it was just a matter of time before I looked at a Facebook programming venture as a business idea. Since I first started writing this article, however, the rules have changed in a significant way, so it is important that if you read this article more than a couple weeks after I've written it, you search for more recent documentation to augment what I'm saying. Facebook is a new New Media promotional avenue, and as such, it's rules are going to be in flux for the forseeable near future.

This isn't going to be a 1-2-3-Profit article, just some salient points and interesting studies I've seen that will help the capitalist programmers out there participate in the Facebook API landgrab.

Valuation of an Application
Shepard Method
There's a fellow that hangs around the Facebook Developer Forums named Tim Shephard who claims to have brokered four Facebook application transactions (that is to say, brokered the sale of four Facebook programs to those interested in owning said apps). He asked each buyer if it would be OK if he published some stats in aggregate. Three of them agreed, while one declined.

Of the three that agreed to include their stats, the sold prices ranged from $0.25 per user to $1.83 per user, with an average of $0.34 per user when averaged by total amount / total users. Total users ranged from around 300 users to around 40,000 users.

It is worth noting that these sales took place before the recent metrics changes Facebook enacted recently.

Shepard also noted that Lee of Altura Ventures is now talking about $1.00 per active user and not per directory user. He defines an active user as a user who visits the canvas page once per week. According to Shepard, this settles in ranges from 20-30% of total users in most applications, with up to 40% tops in high engagement applications.

Kincaid Method
Tom Kincaid, a Facebook app developer, also had theories that were similar in terms of valuating an app for sale. According to Kincaid, all you really need are four numbers to give you a valuation of dollar per user. Impressions per user per month, CPM, growth rate, and required return. Expressed as a valuation equation, it would look like this:

DollarPerUser = ((CPM / 1000) * MonthlyImpressionPerUser * 12) * (1 + AnnualGrowthRate) / (RequiredReturn - AnnualGrowthRate)

It’s the last two that can be tricky. What is the growth measuring? User growth or revenue growth. The first number can be quite spectacular, especially in the early days of an App (100% of 2 is 2) - over 100% a day in some cases. As for the the second number, the required return, who knows?

Required return on an application that one guy made in a weekend and costs $100/month to host is very difficult to gauge.

He gives a for-instance:

Using some ballpark estimates, we can plug in numbers and get a valuation. CPM $0.50 which is a good AdSense return, impressions per user per month 30 or 1 a day, some people use it a lot and some don’t user it at all, growth 15% which is a good business, required return 30% which is quite high, but around credit card rates if someone were to fund their business that way. The result: an app is worth $1.38 per user.

Which Method is Best? What about Sleepy Hollow?
I think both methods are valuable, but who you are determines which method you'll use. A required return is something an in-the-trench programmer isn't going to really think about, but a Slide.com definitely will. If you're on the buying side, you'll definitely want to apply the Kincaid method, as you'll have a clearer picture of what an application needs to make. If you're a developer, the Shepard Method will be more applicable to someone like you.

None of this takes into account ways of valuating an application that doesn't intend to make money off of advertising monetization. Kien Lee makes an excellent point in his "Sleepy Hollow" example:

You have the Sleepy Hollow application, which has 400 users, practically the whole town, ex-cows and one cat. When the headless horseman comes, and someone sees, they log on to Facebook, return a couple of pokes and clicks on that application. The town goes into alert and lockdown. Everyone is safe, except the pussy.

Is your 400 user application worth $1.00 peruser? or $2.00? or 3? No! It's worth much more because you're a monopoly that's effective.

So obviously, the formulas in practice today aren't a one-size-fits-all, but they are a good guage of a one-size-fits-most. This current round of land-grab seems to be for eyeballs, and particularly fingers that click on ads. That isn't to say the next round of applications that are en vogue aren't going to be highly utilitarian in nature, and designed less around the profile page, and more around the usability of Facebook as a Web 2.0 operating system.

Hopefully this boom at Facebook will continue, so we'll have more interesting topics generate off this.

I'm looking to connect up soon with some prominent movers-and-shakers in the Facebook developer community, talk with them, and see if there are other topics that warrant exploration here. So stay tuned for more!

Did I leave something crucial out? Did I totally miss the mark on something? Want more information on some of this? Leave a comment or email me @ guesswho@rizzn.com.

/rizzn

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gPhone Hubbub!

While the world continues to try to figure out whether to believe me and my unnamed source, I've got a list of a few of the folks talking about gPhone confirmation. Most folks are seeming to repeat what I say, and accurately interpreting the words, although a couple have taken an aspect of my analysis and skewed it. That's ok - it's expected. Since I don't have any other breaking news today, and my Developing for Facebook story isn't ready yet, I'm going to round up some of the coverage here.

(hey! it's not every day that the entire blogosphere mentions my name. let me bask in it for a second!)

Google alerted me this morning that:

• Wired said that: Rumor: Google Phone Will Be Linux-Powered, GPS-Loaded and Cheap: "If the murmurs are true, the GPhone cometh in September."
• the UK Guardian said that: The gPhone: "Speculation continues about Google's mobile phone plans."
• IntoMobile said that: Google GPhone confirmed as low-cost sub-$100 device: "Rizzn.com has also allegedly confirmed that the Google Phone will be using an ad-based model to help subsidize the cost of the phone - serving up Google ads whenever possible." [a point of clarification... that's analysis on my part, not confirmation. There will be ads on the phone, and the price-point is allegedly going to be low, but that one will subsidize the other, it's just an educated guess on my part]
• SEOPrincipal said that: Google Phone “Confirmed” - Will Be The Computer For The Poor: "Finally, someone posted something that looks like a reliable confirmation of the coming release of the Google Phone." [thanks! finally someone thinks I'm reliable instead of baggin' on me! :-) and he also said:] "Remember that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said last year that they would provide free phones to people if they accept to view advertising."

Digging down into the MSNBC article linked above from last November, you'll find the following quotes:

Schmidt said Saturday that as mobile phones become more like handheld computers and consumers spend as much as eight to 10 hours a day talking, texting and using the Web on these devices, advertising becomes a viable form of subsidy.

"Your mobile phone should be free," Schmidt told Reuters. "It just makes sense that subsidies should increase" as advertising rises on mobile phones.

He continues a little later in the interview with some more revealing comments:

The Google executive said his own company had no plans to directly give away phones itself, nor is he aware of any effort by partners such as phone makers Nokia or Motorola or mobile operators like Vodafone to make such a radical move, he said.

Schmidt acknowledged that mobile phones may never become totally free to the consumer. Newspapers are still not completely free a hundred years after they started relying on advertising, but they certainly are inexpensive, he noted.

Given the context of the information I got the other day from my friend, doesn't seem that far out of line now, eh?

At any rate, back to the coverage of me the gPhone rumor - these are the folks that really kicked off the coverage (thanks!):

• Mashable
• GigaOM: ... where there are apparently a lot of evangelists of the OLPC who are mad as crap at me for "spreading the rumors" that "Google is going to try to crush the OLPC." RTFA, and you'll see that's not what I said.
  

Did you post some unique analysis on this? Email the show, and we'll try to talk about it today.

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Interview with Brad Hunstable on Politics and Technology

Chances are, you're here for the GPhone story. While you're around, though, stick around for this post, since it's tre interessant, especially with the campaign heating up almost as much as the market for online video.

Brad Hunstable, one of the principals and founders of UStream.tv dropped by the show again today to speak a bit about some major political events going on at his site this week.

His commentary on the future role of technologies like UStream in politics were particularly interesting. We'll comment a bit on that the show today (Episode 116).

Click here to download the interview.



Here's the roundup of what's actually going down there at UStream.

3pm PST today:

Darcy Burner Virtual Town Hall To Counter Bush LIVE on Ustream.TV ( more info here: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/seattlepolitics/archives/120620.asp)

12pm PST today:
Five presidential candidates confirmed they will take part in discussions of key domestic issues before more than 600 representatives of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) on August 27 and 28 at the Disney Yacht and Beach Club in Orlando, FL.

The schedule for the IAM's Conversation with the Candidates is as
follows:

Mon. Aug. 27, 3:30 pm New York Sen. Hillary Clinton
Mon. Aug. 27, 7:30 pm California Rep. Duncan Hunter and
former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee
Tue. Aug. 28, 7:30 pm Former North Carolina Sen. John
Edwards and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich

The candidate conversations will be moderated by Erin Moriarty of CBS
News.

The event will be streamed, live, via uStream.

/rizzn

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GPhone - It's Confirmed

Update: 9:36 AM CST (10/02/207): This is where the update on all the new gPhone confirmations are.

Update 5:36 PM CST (8/27/2007): 211 Blog Reactions to the story, according to Technorati. Apparently I struck a chord talking about the what people seemed to have now dubbed it, the "gPhone" (notice the iPhone-style capitalization). At any rate, I encourage you to check out the podcast discussion over at Podango to get the full sense of context of the conversation. It's around 7-10 minutes into the show or so, but the first story off the top. Since it's such a big deal and everyone is talking about it now, I'm going to check again with my friend and see if he or someone at the company will make a statement on it. He had mentioned a name (that presently escapes me) that had demo'ed it in the past and that might be willing to speak about it. My goal is to track him down or be given a good reason why he can't (or won't) speak to it now.

Update 11:33 PM CST (8/27/2007): I spoke to my friend again this evening and told him about everyone's linking and talking about the story. He was moderately amused, but ask for re-assurance I wouldn't use his name, which I told him. He gave me the name of the fellow that's the lead programmer/designer on the gPhone. He's set to speak with him in the near future, and he's going to try to casually ask whether or not he was actually supposed to say something about this or not. To re-iterate: my source re-assured me there is a gPhone, but wasn't for certain whether or not he was allowed to say that.

Also (to answer some of the emails I've been getting), the picture below is not a confirmed image of the actual gPhone, but an image I found on Engadget and about a hundred other blogs that seems to be used every time the gPhone is mentioned.

Regarding the $100 laptop strategy, he clarified that it's more of a long term possibility (based on functionality) of this device rather than an original design strategy. Development on this began, as I understand it, before both the $100 Laptop and the iPhone hit the market. Regardless, as Google's primary source of revenue continues to be advertising, I can still easily see them subsidizing purchase of the phone and attempting to recoup investment off ad revenue.

Last Update Here 2:59 PM CST (8/28/2007): Further gPhone commentary will be found here for the time being.

---{Original Post Below]===>

I'm going to talk about this on the show today, so don't miss Episode 116 of RizWords.

I talked to one of my inside sources at Google today. He spoke on conditions of anonymity, but the guy is someone I trust implicitly. He said that he was baffled at Google's apparent internal confusion on the GPhone issue - that they've actually demo'ed the thing in public before.

He said that the Google (applications) Suite is going to play a huge role in the usability of the GPhone, and the thought process behind it's functionality is less about beating the iPhone and more about beating the $100 Laptop, which provides a huge clue behind what will be the pricing structure on this.

This is my analysis based on what he told me: It'll probably be sold at a loss or sold as a loss leader to increase ad-monetized content viewing. Just a guess though.

When he was telling me about all the nuances of what he's seen the thing do, I couldn't help but audibly remark about the FCC bid for the 700mhz spectrum making a whole lot more sense. He didn't come out and say it, but I got the impression that they were gunning for the spectrum with a vengeance.

Essentially, this is a post to say that this is a solid confirmation on the GPhone - regarding the two week timetable on it's release, he said he could not confirm that part of the story. I suggested a theory that perhaps they'll show a version of the phone in two weeks (or a press conference about it), but it might not be available for American release until later, and he seemed to think that was a reasonable theory.

Other tidbits that I'm trying to recall based on questions I've received from readers:

• It's a modified Linux kernel
• There is integrated GPS and GoogleMaps

I couldn't get much more out of him than that, and he wouldn't put anything on the record, due to his unique position at the company he wasn't sure what exactly he was allowed to say, but his exuberance and confidence was quite clear when he talked about the GPhone.

We'll analyze this on the show today (Episode 116), so don't miss it.

/rizzn

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Badware: 1700 Posts that No One Will Read

According to Google, rizzn.com is a site that "may hurt your computer." Don't you just feel dangerous as heck reading this right now?

I'm not exactly sure why, although I was sent an email from a business associate last week:

When I empty my cache, and visit your site,

my Computer Associates anti-virus reports

the Microsoft Data Access pop-up there,

is infected with the JS/Petch virus.

I ignored it when it first happened Wednesday,

thinking it was just an ant-virus hiccup;

and it didn't re-occur until I cleaned out my

IE cache, and re-visited you today.

I checked the server, and all the domains with a virus scanner on the system, but found nothing. I chalked it up to a random error, until just now, when I discovered that virtually all my Google traffic has disappeared. Below any link from Google to rizzn.com, appears the following warning message: "This site may harm your computer."

This is very disconcerting for me. I went through the Google webmaster tools and requested a 'review.' I'll let you know how things turn out. All recent virus scans of the domain and web pages show no infections. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the infection came from a GoogleAd - I heard on Buzz Out Loud a while back that there were some worms that were launched through GoogleAds. I haven't confirmed this to be the source, but call it a hunch. We have a bunch of virus protection on the server, I've personally verified that. I can't imagine that a virus has penetrated that many layers of protection there.

At any rate, stay tuned for tomorrow or Monday. I've got a piece on Facebook Applications I'm working on that I hope to release here soon.

/rizzn

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Around the House

A few more pictures from around the house. I promise, normal postings will resume this week... I've been deep into some research projects lately.



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New Pictures of Jacob Li and family.

Hey folks. We got a new digital cam this weekend. Here are some photos from it.
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Joe Dan Thomas: In Memoriam

Hey Rizzn-ites,

This is very narrowcasting considering my fairly wide audience these days, but I need to put something up online so that friends near and far from the Tyler and East Texas area can find out about a dear friend of ours that has recently passed.

Joe Dan Thomas, known online as XVbladeloveVX and the producer of the Mark and Darrell Show, has recently passed due to respiratory complications stemming from a heart attack. Keep in mind I just found out yesterday about the news of his death, and I received the news second-hand, but here's the story as I recall it...

Joe, as most of his friends know, has been on kidney dialysis for several years now, and his health has been in flux for a while. He recently had some cardiac problems, and ended up needing a pacemaker. Shortly after he returned home after recieving the pacemaker, his home healthcare worker found him collapsed on the floor. He was rushed to the hospital and revived, but remained comatose.

His father, who has been absent for the vast majority of Joe's life, was named as his next of kin, and immediately had him removed from life support. Friends and other family rushed in and convinced doctors and Joe's father to put him back on life support. Over the next week, friends and family were just learning of his condition, but by week's end, despite Joe's improved responsiveness and health, his father removed life support again.

The official cause of death was named respiratory failure.

Joe's dear friend Doug was set to give the eulogy at his funeral, which was yesterday at 2:00 PM (which I learned about too late to attend, unfortunately), but for some reason none of his friends were allowed to speak for him, including Doug. In my friend Ronnie's words, "the funeral was in no way what Joe would have wanted."

Ronnie and several others are trying to organise a graveside memorial more fitting Joe, a man whom most of us remember when we think of our good times back in the post high-school days in the late 90's. This is set to take place in the next couple of weeks, and I encourage all of you to use the comments section to communicate with one another to try to find times that will work for all of us.

For those of you outside the Tyler enclave, if you're a long-time Rizzn-ite, you may remember Joe as the narcoleptic producer of the Mark and Darrell show for most of it's several year run.

Joe - you will be missed not just by me, but by many, many of your friends. I can only pray that you rest in God's merciful hands now, and know a measure of peace and comfort that you were ill-afforded in your all-too-short life on this plant.

/rizzn

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Monetizing Online Video: The Investigation Continues

Your monumental response! It's flattering and helpful all at once!

I really wanna take a second to express appreciation for all of you who wrote in on the last post about video monetization. I'm far from done with my research, but I have a whole load of links and companies to investigate now. I've also had an opportunity to speak with heads and representatives of a lot of the top ad monetization groups out there. I'll disclose a bit of what I've found, but I'm saving the bulk of what I'm coming across for a special episode of RizWords and a very special blog post here on this site.

I spoke with a fellow named Chris over at Brightcove (the company currently serving up video for the site) on the ad monetization opportunities with his organisation. As it turns out, BrightCove's much lauded monetization program performs way below my expectations. Let's chat about my expectations for a second, and then we'll get into what the internet ad world is shaping up to be.

I must admit that when it comes to video content, it's not my original home. My new media experience starts out in the text space (blogging), then moving into streaming audio, then to podcasting, and then to video. I'm not a neophyte to the industry, though, by any means. Last year, I produced the successful video podcasts NewsCube (with J. Douglas Barker) and RunTime with Luke and Laney over on the PoddedMeat Network. We had a good run with those shows, and at our peak viewership reached around 60,000 folks per episode.

The problem was, at the time, there were no real avenues for easy monetization. This is chief amongst the reasons I've gone back to audio podcast production with Art this year. In the audio space, the industry average you should get in monetization is around $30 CPM. In reality, your mileage may vary between $10 CPM up to as high as $60 CPM. Given the much greater power of videos to convert to sales and exposure, I would say that doubling those CPM's should not be outside the realm of possibility.

Now there is. Back then: too bleeding edge. Now: not so much. A cursory web search pulls up around 10 or 15 companies that monetize video content, and a deeper search through industry blogs turn up about 5 or 6 more.

My initial research, though, which is what you're reading through this tripe to find out about, focused on the two biggest names in video monetization: Revver and BrightCove. BrightCove is broadly lauded around the blogosphere as one of the most advanced video sharing players that offers monetization, which is what attracted me to it in the beginning. It's ability to create channels and autoplaying embedded videos, not to mention the detailed reporting features, are what attracted me to it in the first place. Indeed, all of those features definitely live up to the hype.

However, after speaking with their ad department (a notoriously difficult department to get a hold of), I was somewhat less pleased with the options available to me. Here's what I found:

• If your ad traffic is less than 10,000 title plays per month, your content should be monetized by CPC.
• If your ad traffic is greater than 10,000 title plays per month, your content is monetized at $8.00 CPM with Pre-Roll and Post-Roll ads.
• Stats are calculated once a quarter, and payment is recieved within 30 days of stats calculation.

Understandably, these statistics disappointed me. And episode of RunTime from last year was at least a five-person operation, and involved about 13 hours of pre, actual, and post production a week. At our peak traffic level we'd be receiving around $480 per episode. Granted, that's real dollars, but for the amount of work and people involved, per person take home would be in the neighborhood of $100. I'm not sure about you, but I can't live off $100 a week.

So, I turned my lonely eyes to Revver. They promise, in their press releases, around a $30 CPM. I've contacted the company a few times to get more information, and in so doing was less than successful. Finally, I uploaded an clip of Iris and I singing Love Shack at some karaoke night a few months ago in an attempt to manually test their monetization. It didn't make it past their censors, even though all ASCAP fees had been paid by the karaoke purveyor, they weren't comfortable putting it up on the site. But, I did get a response from a real human being, and I'm using that open line of dialog to work my way up the chain of command till I get to speak to someone in charge of monetization.

That's where I'm at currently with those two, but I do have about 20 other companies I'll be posting a review of next week, so stay tuned for that. Thanks for all your help, folks!

If you have any other input on the matter, send me an email. Elsewise, I'll see you on the big episode 100 tomorrow on RizWords!

/rizzn

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