Video podcast network Revision3 has announced its growth results for 2009, highlighting several milestones for the company:

• Revision3’s programs were viewed nearly 70M times during 2009;
• Revenue grew 30%;
• Average deal size grew by 50%; and
• They added Ford, Adidas, Coors, Nokia and Panasonic as major advertisers.

Revision3 also added 10 new shows in 2009:

• Video Games: CO-OP, Bytejacker
• Technology : HD Nation, AppJudgment
• Culture & Film: Film Riot, Digg Dialogg
• Comedy: Web Zeroes, LandlineTV, INST MSGS, ROFL

Revision3 is best known for its hit Diggnation, but also has hits with Tekzilla and Scam School, which both had more than 1 million monthly views in 2009.

Podcasting network Wizzard Media today announced that podcast downloads from their network were up by 45% in Q2, compared to 2008.

For the second quarter of 2009, Wizzard Media saw total network podcast download requests of 350,053,574 vs. 241,600,000 download requests in the second quarter of 2008

The company also reported:

• The audience consuming podcasts from shows on the Wizzard Media Network grew 41% (5.3 million).
• Wizzard Media Network advertising impressions served through its proprietary Alchemy advertising engine grew from 3.9 million in the second quarter of 2008 to 13.7 million in the second quarter of 2009, an increase of 251%.

Internet video startup Revision3, the home of Diggnation, XLR8R TV, Epic Fu and other popular video podcasts, has been making headlines since its founding in 2005. 

The most recent headlines, though, have surrounded Revision3′s extended outage over Memorial Day weekend, and the way CEO Jim Louderback’s very publicly pointed the finger at anti-piracy firm MediaDefender as the cause for the outage. 

Podcasting News’ Publisher Elisabeth McLaury Lewin caught up with Louderback, who answered questions about Revision3, how they plan to respond to the MediaDefender attack and his vision for the future of Internet media.

Revision3′s Vision For Internet Video

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Your company name, Revision3, refers to the idea of a “third wave” of television: standard TV being the first, cable the second, and Internet video the third.

What makes this third wave of television important, and how does it define your company?

Jim Louderback: It’s a brand new way to watch video content, and it will ultimately change the previous two revisions.

Unlike many others in this space, who see putting their video, ultimately, on broadcast or cable, Revision 3 believes in making the best video programming for the Internet. That’s different from doing it for broadcast. It’s a new medium, and new media needs a new company to make it work.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: You’ve described Revision3 as “the first media company that gets it”. What’s that mean to you?

Jim Louderback: The first one that “gets” that this is a new medium, and is creating content for that medium, rather than just cow-pathing old content into the new space.

Responding To MediaDefender’s Attack

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Revision 3′s service died over Memorial Day weekend as the result of a denial of service attack. What was the impact of this attack on your business?

Jim Louderback: We were unable to deliver programming and web pages for 3 days.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: On your blog, you pinned the blame for this attack on MediaDefender. Do you think MediaDefender intentionally targeted Revision3 and tried to take you down?

Jim Louderback: No, I don’t think it was intentionally directed at us – but I do believe that they were intentionally targeting anyone distributing bit torrent media who cut their access off.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: You use P2P [peer-to-peer] file sharing as a distribution tool. How important is this to your company? Does this help level the playing field for Revision 3?

Jim Louderback: It’s how we got our start, but it’s really not all that important to us. P2P accounts for under 5% of our views.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Do you think MediaDefender is “targeting piracy,” as they claim, or targeting P2P as a distribution platform?

Jim Louderback: I think they are targeting piracy, but were unable to fathom that a legitimate media company would use P2P for distribution.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: What’s your response to MediaDefender? Can you comment on whether you’ll take any legal action against them?

Jim Louderback: I probably won’t take legal action, but I am going to send them an invoice.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: This denial of service attack shut you down – you couldn’t serve videos, you couldn’t serve up ads, apparently even your internal e-mail was shut down by the attack. What do you have to do differently to ensure that your company can withstand an attack like this in the future?

Jim Louderback: We’re going to put a load balancer out front, rather than a firewall.

On Revision3′s New Media Strategy

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: It seems that Revision 3 tries to get its content everywhere. What’s your distribution strategy?

Jim Louderback: Our mantra is anywhere, anytime, any device, any service.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: How are you measuring the success of your shows?

Jim Louderback: Number of viewers of each episode, aggregate views per month, and revenue.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: You’ve got a wide variety of advertisers, including Sony, Microsoft, Verizon. What does Revision 3 offer advertisers, compared to traditional television or cable?

Jim Louderback: Incredible awareness, retention, intent and action

For example, 100% of our viewers can name a single sponsor, unaided. 93% can name two or more. 48% have purchased a product or service from our sponsors.

Did you watch traditional broadcast or cable TV last night? Can you name even one advertiser?

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: I noticed this morning on Mashable.com that your Tekzilla co-host Veronica Belmont is working on a new show, Qore, available via the Playstation Network. What platforms are Revision3 looking at developing content for?

Jim Louderback: Anywhere, anytime, any device, any service. Name it and we think it <laugh>.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Looking beyond the recent attack, what’s your vision for the future of Revision 3?

Jim Louderback: To become synonymous with Internet Television. When you think of TV on the Internet, think of us!

Update: Revision 3 just announced that Wine Library TV and its creator, Gary Vaynerchuk, aka GaryVee, are joining the network.

Image: Robert Scoble

Podcasting startup PodShow has laid off one-third of its staff, according to a report Valleywag:

PodShow, the San Francisco-based online-video network best known for launching the career of CNET’s Natali Del Conte, is laying off about 20 employees, or as much as 30 percent of its staff.

“There are no secrets, only information you don’t yet have,” is the slogan for former MTV VJ Adam Curry’s podcast. Curry, a PodShow cofounder, didn’t show up to deliver information about the firings; we’re told he left that to middle managers.

This looks like the end of the podcasting hype.

None of the heavily hyped podcasting startups have delivered on their promise, despite a one-year jump on the mainstream competition and inexorable trends driving people to podcasts and other Internet media.

Expect more podcast hype backlash in the next year, while forward-thinking organizations and early-adopters push podcasting technology to mainstream adoption.

More: Our take on the podcasting hype cycle.

Podcasting and video podcasting startup PodTech has had its share of negative coverage recently, being described by some as “the Valley’s worst video network.” The company has been struggling to get additional funding, has recently let some of its staff go and has been criticized for the quality of its content.

PodTech CEO John Furrier’s attempts to put some positive spin on the company’s situation, though, appear to have backfired. Even worse for PodTech, the situation has devolved into a A-list blogger catfight between former Microsoft blogger and current PodTech employee Robert Scoble and TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington.

“Techcrunch got a lot of things wrong,” said Scoble, “including that we’re getting out of the content business.”

“If I got the story wrong, its because John wasn’t being clear in how he describes the company,” responded TechCrunch’s Arrington. “It’s bullshit to call this out publicly.”

Arrington responded with a TechCrunch post, telling PodTech “I’m not your VP Marketing,” adding “I personally find 90% of Podtech content just slightly more entertaining than watching paint dry.”

PodTech needs to forget about spinning its situation, and instead focus on its content. If PodTech is staying in the content business, like Furrier and Scoble have said, the company needs to figure out how to deliver good content that has some mainstream appeal, and it needs to do it quickly.

Pioneering podcaster and PodTech CEO John Furrier has posted a defense of the company, which has struggled to become profitable, failed to find new investors and has had to let go some of its content creators. The company has also been subjected to scathing coverage recently, especially from “tech gossip rag” Valleywag, which described PodTech as “the Valley’s worst video network.”

PodTech raised $5.5 million in 2006, and has spent much of the last year developing video podcasts by geek-tech personalities like Irina Slutsky, Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis. While PodTech has featured well-respected techies, none has yet demonstrated that they have mainstream appeal.

PodTech’s View

In a blog post this morning, Furrier offers his “basic facts” about PodTech:

1. 38 full time employees
2. Rent approx 12,000 sf office space in Palo Alto
3. PodTech Studio in Palo Alto for video production and show development
4. Record revenue growth every quarter
5. 45 corporate clients and growing
6. Fullly funded to hit projected cash flow positive (break even and profitable) with our current mix in business not including new products that we are developing
7. Focus of the company:
   1. editorial content;
   2. develop media franchises through signing (aggregation) of professional producers and in house development (our studio);
   3. continue to be the leader in social media for our clients;
   4. innovate on the social media ad models that we are developing; and
   5. media technology platform
8. I and the board are looking for a CEO specifically someone who can take the day to day operations off my hands and build a team to scale the company. This will allow me to focus externally on developing media and working with leading marketers and advertisers. This is a very similar situation that Ross Mayfield recently posted about – CEO 2.0.  I’m proud of PodTech’s market position, team, platform, and our client base. For the company it’s about getting to cash flow positive and then scaling. The business is doing well but we do need to improve in many areas.
9. The changes will continue. PodTech is in the middle of massive change and growth.  I expect that change will be part of our company culture.
10. We are not getting out of the content creation business but will continue to focus on aggregation.

One of the key points in Furrier’s message is that PodTech is in the business of developing and signing podcasts in order to create profitable Internet media franchises. PodTech’s new CEO will face a lot of challenges, but the biggest is likely to be turning the company into one that can deliver great podcasts with broad appeal.

More discussion at TechCrunch, MakeYouGoHmm