New Feature Buffet - Expanded Accounting Reports and more
Alright, we’ve got some new improvements and features to tell y’all about - we’ve been listening to your suggestions and think you’ll be pleased with the results. First things first - expanded accounting reports are live. In addition to building a new front end to report statistics, we’ve added and redefined reportable metrics to give you all the raw data you need to gauge your videos’ performance. The new reports are more robust and there are now several different report views, so we’ll walk you through the changes here.
The first thing you’ll see when clicking on your accounting report is your Analytics Overview page, which contains a quick-reference graph of recent activity on your videos. Clicking on the views and earnings tabs on the overview page will show you a graphical representation of views and earnings for your 10 most recent videos - scrolling over data points on the graph provides more detailed information about a particular video’s views and earnings.
The next view you’ll want to familiarize yourself with is the Events View, where events for your all your videos are broken down in quick-reference columns. The table in the Events View includes an expanded bevy of raw data such as video starts, complete views, and ad clicks, and can be sorted by column. So you can check in on your top performers, your stragglers, and everything in between to gauge performance, see what percentage of viewers watched till the end, how many clicked, etc.
The third and final view is the Month View, which gives you snapshots of your videos’ cumulative performance on a month-to-month basis. This is great for reference and tracking performance over time - how many views did your videos get in November? How much did you earn in December? That information is now just a click away. Want to mash your data? Make your own graphs - you can export all your video data into a CSV file and open it up in your spreadsheet editor of choice.
As part of the accounting update, public-facing video viewcounts have been changed from displaying complete views to displaying video starts, and you’ll notice that video viewcounts have increased to reflect this change. Woot woot!
Onward and upward - we’ve also added a full-screen button to the Flash player. This feature is pretty self-explanatory - check it out by clicking the full-screen button on the video above.
Another great update: we’ve updated our RSS feeds based on your feedback. The new feeds include Creative Commons licensing details for each video, a general restructuring that will make the feed experience better in feed readers and for developers alike, and direct links to the Flash version of the videos and the video detail page on Revver.com. We’ve done everything possible within the limitations of what the MRSS specification allows - we think you’ll be pleased with the update.
We look forward to hearing your feedback on these updates, so keep it coming. With the behind-the-scenes grudge work of adding infrastructure scalability behind us, we’re free to focus on even more new features and improvements to the site. So stay tuned!
Weekend Edutainment: What is Circuit Bending?
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If you’ve ever wondered how experimental musicians create and discover new sounds, or even if you haven’t, this preview for The Circuit Bending Documentary by Derek Sajbel should be of interest to your eyes and your ears. Circuit bending, the practice of splitting open and rewiring electronic instruments to produce alien sounds, proves that a little DIY elbow grease can go a long way towards creating something new and different. The vid features electronic music pioneer Daedalus, among others, sharing his circuit bending stories and showing off some home made instruments.
See more music-and-electronics-filled videos from DrRek here.
Video of the Day: Top Shelf - Episode Three
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Another week, another Top Shelf stocked with some of the week’s finest new Revver videos for your enjoyment. As usual, Callie and company love suggestions, so send your favorite new videos each week to Callie@theflux.tv.
Video of the Day: Do’s and Dont’s - Derrick Beckles
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Lesson learned from today’s video: when filming a marriage proposal for a girl that you made out with once at a party, don’t do it with your buddy sitting next to you. Dude will barge into your screen and push you out of your chair! You can thank the guys at Vice Magazine’s VBS.tv for this useful advice, but keep watching and you can also thank them for dateline reporting about drug policy in Bolivia, mountain-destroying mining practices in West Virginia, and the plight of Iraq’s only heavy metal band. Spike Jonze is VBS’s creative director, and the work he’s doing here goes to show that if you give a skateboarder a video camera and a brain, he’ll give you gems in all cuts and colors.
Episode Zero - More Episodes!
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Episode Zero, a Guest-esque mockumentary we discovered a few months ago, follows an obsessed Star Wars fan as he waits in line for over a month to be first in line for Star Wars: Episode Three - only to find out he has been waiting at the wrong theater. It’s funny the amount of baggage that comes with the term “Star Wars fan” - that label and the subculture it denotes hold as much meaning for people as the films themselves. And thanks to Episode Zero, these geeks are finally getting their fifteen minutes of tragicomic fame.
Around half the film is already available for viewing at Episode0.com, so stay tuned as the rest of the film as well as a bevy of special features are made available throughout April.
Video of the Day: Moonshine - Part 1
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ItsAllInYourHands.com, the online production house behind interactive web series Satacracy 88 and Find Me, just premiered their new series Moonshine, and the first episode has left us wanting more. As with all their productions, Moonshine will air in the form of a three part episode before viewers are asked to vote on the course the show takes, so pay attention - it’s all in your hands. Stay tuned to ItsAllInYourHands.com for the rest of the episode and your chance to vote.
Video of the Day: Rogue Cursor
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Today’s video is a cursor-and-mouse thriller courtesy of the comic minds over at Black20.com. Thought your cursor’s tracking speed would make it easy to track? No such luck. Thought your mouse was under your thumb? Think again. You get the idea. For more great videos, visit Black20.com.
Video of the Day: Galacticast does Internet TV
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Galacticast, old friends of ours (in internet years at least), are back with another masterful parody for the Network2 How to Watch Internet TV Contest. The contest aims to raise awareness about quality content on the net and Network2.TV, a one-stop internet TV directory that aims to see “regular TV” go the way of the dinosaur. Galacticast’s entry, which has “Internet TV” and “regular TV” engaged in a heavily one-sided verbal sparring match a la “Mac” and “PC,” is pure gold, and we hope they win the $25,000(!) grand prize (unfortunately, judging for the conteset is not based on votes). Oh, and thanks for the Revver shout out guys!
Acceptable.tv premieres tonight!
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Hey, everyone, just a reminder that Acceptable.tv begins tonight at 10pm on VH1. Here’s one of our favorite user-generated contenders so far! Acceptable.tv is powered by Revver and we couldn’t be more pleased that they chose us to power this incredible project. Go forth and be amused, and hopefully inspired to participate!
Weekend Edutainment: Truthdig.com - Scott Ritter in Conversation with Robert Scheer
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This is the first in a weekly series we’ll be doing here on the blog of thought-provoking, awareness-building, generally informative Friday afternoon videos to carry you through the weekend. We work hard all week keeping you entertained, and thought the weekend would be a good time for some light edutainment. So sit back, relax, and let your mind do all the work.
Today’s video comes from TruthDig.com, and features former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter talking with Truthdig editor Robert Scheer about strategies and considerations for exiting Iraq. Ritter is a truly “round” political character - he voted for Bush in 2000 and maintains his allegiance to the Republican Party, but has been a staunch critic of the current administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East, repeatedly stating that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) prior to the US invasion in March, 2003. The interview is interesting stuff - watch the rest here.
TruthDig.com is a web magazine dedicated to providing accurate and insightful reporting on today’s issues, featuring talented contributors digging deep to provide provocative stories and incite dialogue. Join them on their dig at TruthDig.com.