There’s a ton of speculation swirling around the web today about whether Revver is for sale. As noted in the CNet article, our CEO Steven Starr has already issued a statement on this: “Revver is not for sale.”

Being a startup in an extremely active tech space, it’s no surprise that rumors around possible acquisition are rampant. We’ve gotten lots of queries about whether Revver is on the market. Given the hubbub sparked by the Youtube purchase, this is a natural part of the conversation.

It’s true that there have been discussions regarding possibly working with Microsoft and DivX, among many other companies. Those conversations are a part of our daily business.

We are also continuing to have conversations with big media companies. It’s true that some of our initial partnerships with Big Media did not come to fruition. As you know, Revver is an open syndication platform. We encourage users to share Revver videos as widely as possible by various means, including downloading. Not surprisingly, many big media companies, notorious for demanding control, initially took issue with this open model. And they really had trouble wrapping their brains around the idea of actually rewarding people for spreading their content around. But we believed (and still do) that the real value of online video is in the sharing. And what better way to encourage that activity than by rewarding it?

When we restructured the company in December, we pulled back from discussions with media companies and refocused our efforts on better serving the independent creator community - the constituency Revver was really built for. Our goal from the start has been to build an open marketplace that rewards independent creators and sharers of video.

Media companies are now slowly evolving into sharing clips more freely. They are experimenting with various ways of working in the online video space. We currently have videos on our system from all sorts of media companies large and small including Universal, Paramount, Fox, Epitaph Records, Downtown Records, Nettwerk Music and CBS.

Interestingly, we are increasingly seeing more conversation about issues of copyright and revenue sharing. Many other video start-ups are battling legal trouble these days - something we can, thankfully, avoid. Our traction as a company has been slow and steady. We didn’t take the easy way out to build our business on copyrighted material. Our foundations are strong and they are rooted in respect for copyright, value of open sharing and a firm belief in creator rights.

So while the blogosphere buzzes with rumors of sales or conversations of sales, we’re just gonna keep on plugging away to make Revver as good as it can be.