The company that was supposed to replace YouTube is now for sale for $300-500k and the assumption of $1 million in debt. Revver promised big bucks to video creators who used the video sharing service. That money was supposed to come from lucrative video ads; that money apparently never came. The story of Revver's mindblowing incompetence (with exclusive cocaine anecdote) follows.

The reasons Revver failed are obvious. Its one advantage was that YouTube didn't pay creators. Then, well, YouTube started paying creators and sucked up all the low-level talent, and meanwhile sites like Superdeluxe topped Revver's "we'll pay you eventually" model with a "we'll actually give you a budget" model, luring away the pros.

But the reason Revver failed so spectacularly was that it tried so hard to go Hollywood. The LA-based, venture-capital-funded company acted fancy, unlike the lovably dorky people running competing sites like Blip.tv. They chased talent like Lonelygirl15, who later returned to YouTube. They offered vlogger Ze Frank cocaine at his first meeting (Ze doesn't do coke, he just looks like he does). It's like the whole company was imitating something they saw on TV.

And now they're worthless. Well, now they admit they're worthless. Which could seem bad for independent artists, except that Revver never came through anyway (they couldn't even tell Ze what they owed him), and YouTube really isn't that bad, and now there's one less awful company souring people to the idea of new media.