Vimeo pushing away content creators

[Eric Santiago]

I haven’t used Vimeo in years.

For clients, frame io has been solid.

We always have YouTube for posting cat videos 🙂

[Craig Seeman]

I also use Frame.io for client comment and approval.

Vimeo had been good for indy filmmakers though and it seems those creatives are being hit hard.

Some also find Vimeo better for demo reels or featuring client work to the public.

[Mark Suszko]

Frame IO is not the same thing, or used the same way, not really. If you were using Vimeo as a point to point source for an audience of one client, Frame IO is a much better solution anyhow. Vimeo was a quality platform for a wider audience than Frame IO is meant for. Their niche was quality over size, and it built a loyal brand on that. It’s just not financially sustainable for them now. Unless they let someone bigger take them over. Like YouTube could buy them and help them with the scaling problem, funding their infrastructure. But YouTube isn’t going to be interested in charity work. They have to get something out of it as well. If you can make the case that adding a “premium tier” service to YouTube is a plus for them? But they’re not hurting for business now.

I don’t know that I have an answer. This is the kind of situation where a white knight venture capitalist billionaire buys out the company as a vanity project. Maybe a movie studio, or a group of studios pooling some resources, to create a platform that’s a walled garden and a farm club for growing their own talent pools. I can imagine Netflix creating a special branch for this, which they then mine for content for the main Netflix service. Something like the DUST sci fi streaming channel.

Just dreaming out loud: not sure any of these ideas are viable.

[Craig Seeman]

Amazon has Prime Video Direct for indy distribution. Not quite the place for demo reels and other stuff but a place for indy filmmakers to distribute.

https://videodirect.amazon.com/home/landing

Their submission specs

[Eric Santiago]

I didn’t think of the self-promotion demo angle.
I haven’t done a demo reel since 1995.

I use what my clients need which 99% of the time, something like frame io.

I lost touch with Vimeo when they started throwing out my old videos due to music licensing.

No harm, just fun stuff that I don’t need out there anymore.

[Greg Pasztor]

I used Vimeo as a way to showcase video to clients/friends without the gutter level whoring of Google and YouTube. I’m sorry to see them give up the fight. It’s certainly in keeping with the downward cultural spiral of the internet. Sorry to see them go. Their interface already does not work for my home page, failing to switch to the video clicked.

[Tony West]

Wow, sorry to hear. I have had my film on their Vimeo on Demand for years as an alternative to amazon Prime (90% watch it on Prime) just wanted a second option. I haven’t received any notification from Vimeo about this change at this point. I’ll keep an eye out.

[Mark Grance]

I used to use Vimeo for client approval years ago, but it became unreliable. I switched to frame.io but it has now become so focused on “camera to cloud” that it has completely dropped the ball on reliability — per their founder:

“Over the course of the past several months, the number of downtime incidents we’ve been experiencing has increased and has resulted in multiple outages that have sometimes lasted for hours. This is completely unacceptable.”

Apparently “unacceptable for months” is acceptable as they continue to market camera to cloud as the solution to everything when it is obvious they can’t handle scaling their product.

It has been down on June 6th, June 8th, June 13 (5 hours) and now today again.

Looking for yet another alternative as this reminds me exactly of the old Vimeo days.

[Mark Grance]

And down again today. Yet founder sent out marketing email (newsletter) today completely ignoring the elephant in the room.

Adobe support keeps responding to Twitter posts asking what the problem is.