You Tube Vs Vimeo

Videos are a great benefit for a website. They keep viewers and potential customers on the page for longer and offer incentive to watch an advertisement. Groupings of videos liked by a user can also help an advertiser narrow down the field and choose specific users to advertise too. In the world of Web 2.0 there are two major websites that offer streaming video: YouTube and Vimeo.

YouTube:

With it's user base far greater than Vimeo the popularity of YouTube is a major strength. Anyone familiar with YouTube will be familiar with it's slogan, “broadcast yourself.” The major popularity of YouTube is that users can do just that – they can post almost anything. This can be a problem for video makers as one YouTube video will have to compete with a sea of other videos in order to be found if it is ever found at all.

The other major benefit of YouTube is that it is completely free. Users will never have to pay a dime to have full accesses to all of YouTube's features which include unlimited HD uploads (as long as the video is one Gigabyte or less and does not exceed ten minutes.) However, because YouTube's service is free YouTube can at anytime drop in an advertisement before your video. These indiscriminate advertisements can turn off viewers and do not benefit the video creator, only YouTube.

YouTube also offers many ways to communicate with the video creator. Such as comments (posted on the forum), messages (sent like an email to the creator) and likes/dislikes. These Web 2.0 features offer a lot of user feedback and allow for “video replies” as well. YouTube is also very user friendly allowing for video embedding on Twitter and Facebook at the simple push of a button. However, this is not without flaws. Rather than offer constructive criticism the feedback options of many videos are permanently clogged with trolls and spammers. Rather than use feed back as a tool it is mostly abused in many videos as a place for people to start internet fights.

Vimeo:

It doesn't bore well for vimeo's user base that before this project I had never heard of it. However, despite it's fewer users Vimeo has some pretty cool features. Vimeo advertises itself as, “a respectful community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make,” right on the home page. Vimeo tries to market itself as a Youtube alternative for the struggling artist. Vimeo offers all sorts of customization for personal websites or Facebook without the fear of having an advertisement for bleach pop up before the video.

However, because Vimeo does not get a lot of revenue from advertisements Vimeo limits some of it's features for non-paid members. Vimeo offers Vimeo Plus and Vimeo Pro for users who need more than the 1 upload a week under 500 MB offered to free users. The price for extended service can be pricey – almost $60 pricey.

Although debatable, Vimeos imbedded videos look “cleaner” than YouTube's, from personal comparisons between the two video players I found Vimeo's videos had a lot more glitches.

This strange white box is my self/separation video. Enjoy!