Vimeo, The Real UGC Video Site
July 3rd, 2008
I’ve been following Vimeo for awhile now, especially after they announced last October they’d offer videos in high definition. However, until now, I’ve mostly been looking at the Vimeo player and supporting features and not really at the content. Last week I started to go through the Vimeo HD catalog and spent several hours watching videos that people had created, the key word here being created. Vimeo appears to have built what YouTube should have been, a user generated content site for people to share and discuss videos they’ve made. The site itself is beautiful, feature rich, and full of really interesting videos. I just pulled up the most popular videos on YouTube right now and about half are clips from television or other sources (not created by the user who uploaded them) and the other half are comprised of girls dancing around in skimpy clothing. Skimpy dancing has its place but I’d hardly consider that creative. Vimeo on the other hand is loaded with student films, video experiments, and all sorts of other creative content. Vimeo’s player is also much better than YouTube’s both in quality and ease of use and if the content creator allows it, you can download the video in it’s original format. How cool is that?
I’m starting to notice more and more blogs embedding Vimeo videos and it will be interesting to see if Vimeo will start to take a bite out of YouTube’s dominance.
Here’s my favorite Vimeo video that I’ve come across so far:
Sleeping Beauty – City lights / Music video from Benjamin Taft on Vimeo.