Vimeo Archive

Update Wednesday – David Karp tells Silicon Alley Insider that he has no idea what this Norbum is. David’s statement: "I’m not involved with Norbum, I don’t know what it is, and I would never make fun of homeless people."

Update – Thursday – Jakob Lodwick notes that this .org site is not his either.

When Jakob Lodwick left was fired from Vimeo earlier this month, I immediately predicted that Lodwick would be working with Tumblr founder David Karp. It seems this might be closer to reality with some investigative journalism just completed by regular CN visitor and author, James Thomas.

This past Saturday, Lodwick posted about some new domains that he registered. The list includes:

• D***S***.COM
• BA******RO****.COM
• n*****.com & .us
• n*****s.com & .us
• n*****ist.com & .org
• n*****ists.com& .org
• n*****ism.com & .org

The previous day Lodwick posted that he had dinner with Karp per his blog post and calls Karp a, "soon famous face."

This is where Thomas went to work. After some Columbo-type maneuvers, we know the full names of some of the domains that Lodwick registered:

• norbum.com
• norbum.us
• norbums.com
• norbumist.com
• norbumist.org
• norbumists.com
• norbumists.org
• norbumism.com
• norbumism.org

Anyone know what a Norbum is? Let’s complete the picture before the new year rings!

Photos by: David Karp & Zach Klein

IAC (Nasdaq:IACI) is announcing a partnership today with Brightcove to "giving IAC businesses the opportunity to launch comprehensive high quality Internet video initiatives". The first IAC brands to utilize the new partnership are: Ticketmaster, Citysearch and 23/6.

Now I get why they did this — it’s about distribution. IAC Chairman Barry Diller even notes at this with his comment on the deal, "By making this platform available across IAC we can continue to deepen engagement with our online audiences, expand the reach of our brands, and open powerful new revenue streams through online video advertising across our sites."

But where’s IAC-owned Vimeo in all of this? While I know Vimeo is a community-based video sharing site, couldn’t Barry have created a white-labeled version of the system and monetized it using the IAC advertising network? While I don’t think this means Vimeo is doomed by any means, it sure is interesting that they selected to go outside before thinking about their own properties and how to leverage them for growth.

It appears that Jakob Lodwick has left Vimeo. Valleywag believes he was fired, some say he quit. Who cares why. It’s not like his next startup is going to do a background check. Liz says that Jakob remains an investor in the company.

The real question is what happens to Vimeo and Jakob now. Let’s take Jakob first. My bet is that he appears on the payroll of Tumblr within ten days. A secondary option is some new startup based on video combined with love lessons with his girlfriend Julia Allison.

Vimeo is another story. In my opinion, Jakob was the “icon” of that site and depending on whether he still participates in the community will determine where the site goes. I compared Viddler and Vimeo recently and believe both sites have great potential in front of them. Both rely on their communities for growth and virality and with Jakob gone, those characteristics take a hit. Will people still lip dub now that he is gone? Sure, but he seemed to lead that charge on the site. Will the community fall apart without him? Not sure, but it might be the right time for another player to make an offer to the Vimeo community.

When I think about joining a startup, Vimeo would be one I would seriously consider as the community is strong and their technology is moving forward past the current leaders.

Earlier this week was the NY Video Meetup. Somewhere around 250 NY’ers attended and viewed a variety of demos and a healthy video discussion. One thing rang true throughout – online video is HOT here in the city. So many companies, so many ideas and a amazing level of excitement/passion around online video.

Here are just a few of the companies in the online video space in the NYC area. I certainly forgot a bunch, so please leave them in the comments.

• Magnify.net – providing video upload,  encoding,  storage,  delivery, and rev share mainly for video clips (CN Coverage)
• Blip.tv – a leader in episodic content (CN Coverage)
• 5min – moving offices to NYC next month – knowledge sharing (CN Coverage)
• Rocketboom – daily video show about anything with host Joanne Colan (CN Coverage)
• For Your Imagination – creating a variety of online-only video shows
• WallStrip – filming in NYC about stocks with host Lindsay Cambell
• Vimeo – video hoster and community creator (CN Coverage)
• ExpoTV – video reviews (CN Coverage)
• Kaltura – video collaboration (CN Coverage)
• Joost – NYC office is North American HQ – television replacement (CN Coverage)
• SavoryNY – restaurants video reviews (CN Coverage)
• WineLibraryTV – ok, he’s in Jersey but we will allow it since he lives in the city – daily wine video show

While other areas of the country and the world are creating online video, NY is where it’s at. Innovation, technology, people, community, it’s all here. And Madison Avenue and Google are here to monetize it all.

Vimeo sure has been getting some major media play the last week. We wrote about Vimeo in the challenge with Viddler and noted some of their new features as well, Silicon Alley Insider called them a "sale" and today they get mainstream attention from the NY Post.

Henry notes, "We groove on the concept, too, except from a business perspective: Streaming videos that are four times as sharp costs four times as much, and video companies are having a hard enough time making a living off of the crappy-definition stuff."

From the Post column, "According to founder Jakob Lodwick, the investment in HD was made worthwhile because Vimeo’s user base is made up largely of amateur filmmakers, as opposed to casual fans who rip content from other sources and simply post it online.  "Our audience completely rejects the notion that Web video needs to be a lower quality than television," said Lodwick, who came to IAC through its purchase of collegehumor.com."

I look at this as a potential monetization angle. Want HD? Pay $10/month. If Vimeo’s user base is "largely amateur filmmakers" as Lodwick suggests (I disagree), then I believe they would go for a plan like this. If Henry is right and streaming HD videos costs 4x as much, I doubt basic ads can support it alone. Another angle is to provide white-label services for a fee to other social networking providers (i.e. Ning, KickApps, Magnify, etc.) along with other video startups.

Update: Viddler has been supporting HD from the beginning.

Earlier this week we posted a video sharing smackdown between Vimeo and Viddler, two of the leading sites for sharing video combined with social networking. I noted a few things that Vimeo could improve on regarding their player. Thanks to Jakob and the team, they made a ton of changes in the last day after my requests! Now if that ain’t customer service, I don’t know what is!

All kidding aside, I am very impressed with the upgrades. Check out the full list on the Vimeo blog. It will be interesting to learn if these social changes to the video player increase their traffic – my bet is on yes. Some of the changes include:

• Bigger video: 506 pixels wide instead of 460.
• Better quality video: 500kbps, instead of 400kbps (Down the road, we will convert your old videos to higher quality automatically; if you want it now, you can Replace the video)
• Better video player: faster, you can Share, Embed, or Like it from anywhere you can watch it (Albums, Channels, or on external sites).
• A cleaner video page

Here is the new final frame after watching a video (this is the lip dub video I referenced on the previous post):