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Viddler vs. Vimeo
Two of my favorite video services are Viddler and Vimeo. Similar names but different strategies. I thought it would be fun to look at the differences and why each one is succeeding. Vimeo is based in NYC and Viddler is in some small town in Pennsylvania. Let’s look at several characteristics for comparison.
Video Player
This is a no-brainer — the clear winner is Viddler. Viddler has the absolute best video player on the market today. They recently even cleaned it up a bit and made it a bit prettier. Vimeo’s player is functional but boring. And when embedded on another site, it offers no clickable links back to either Vimeo or the content creator. It’s a dead end. I can only imagine how much traffic and sheer numbers of users Vimeo is losing out on by only offering such a basic video player.
Community
Both services have very passionate and interactive communities. Vimeo seems to skew a bit more affluent and to younger executives while Viddler is more mainstream and picks up a wider range of audiences. Viddler also hosts more corporate videos and content from around the world while Vimeo has, what appears to be, a larger U.S. percentage of users. Vimeo is more about community within the Vimeo Web site, while Viddler seems to be suited to sharing/embedding across the Web.
Signature Viral Element
Vimeo uses the “lip dub” as it’s signature viral element - this is where you make believe you are singing to a song but you really aren’t. There are some great ones and the one of the best is from an actress on All My Children.
Viddler’s signature viral element is the “MeToday” - this is a simple concept where you film either what you are going to do, what you are doing or what you did during the day.
The edge here goes to Vimeo as I find the lip dub’s to be fun and interesting.
Celebrity Power
Viddler gets its top star power from two people: the Wine Man, WineLibraryTV host Gary Vaynerchuk and iJustine. Here is a sample video from each:
Vimeo gets its star power from the Star magazine Editor, Julia Allison (who apparently is dating the Vimeo founder). Here is a sample of her work:
Traffic and Revenue Model
Vimeo uses banner ads currently and Viddler hasn’t shared their revenue model as of yet. Traffic is nearly impossible to compare based on what I have listed above as Vimeo is site-centric and Viddler is sharing-centric.
Conclusion
I actually like both services a lot and find that in the end a winner is too close to call. Viddler wins on tech, Vimeo on community but even those are so close. Please check out our previous Viddler coverage and I am in the process of contacting Vimeo for an interview in the coming week.
Do you have a preference? Are there other video services you like? Let me know!
I’ve come to expect nothing less than greatness from you Allen and this does not miss the mark. Thanks for taking the time to do this comparison. If you have any questions (or if anyone reading this article does) I’m always available.
The only reason I use Viddler instead of just embedding my own h.264 video on my web site (in my opinion, better quality and a better player experience through QuickTime) is for the awesome community stuff they’ve built in. The ability to add timed tags and comments, and even video comments at specific points in the video really makes it a different experience from everything else I’ve seen. And right now they’re still at the point where a new person can jump in with a funny or interesting video and get featured right on their front page. How cool is that?
That might be a good function for Viddler to adopt.
I think your missing the point with vimeos player. People like the deadend feature, it helps people come back to the places that the video was posted instead of creating a massive embed everywhere effect. Videos on vimeo are very much more personal and the ability to limit sharing is great. I could only hope that vimeo gives users control to limit hosts that embed from the admin area.
I disagree with your comment about the Vimeo player being boring. I just recently discovered Vimeo and am in love with the no distractions player. Finally we have a web player that doesn’t have a bunch of crap around it. It gives you the title, and the basic buttons for video playback allowing the video content to get the users full attention and the player to get the heck out of the way.
Hrm… there are links to the vimeo and the user on the vimeo player itself.
i just want to see the video
Works for me and I love Viddler’s comment features. They rock!
You can see the links on the videos you have embedded here on this page. I’m not sure why you claimed our embedded player does not link back to the video page. I’d appreciate it if you corrected the article. Thanks for writing about us!
Viddler is the future. I can’t believe youtube hasn’t tried to copy them yet.
Hmm - where are the links? I can’t click anywhere on the video. Thanks!
I’ve been using viddler for awhile now and I love them!!!
Great community, great interaction, great videos!!!
I’ve been using Vimeo, never heard of Viddler. So this is the first time. Maybe I would give it a go.
the blue words are the links, just like web pages
Thanks - I guess I never noticed that they offer a link before you hit play but nothing after that including at the end.
Thanks for the comparison. Did you also consider blip.tv? It seems more focused on podcasting but it seems to have a lot in common with Vimeo. I tried both for sharing my personal movies and ended up going with blip.tv mainly because of it’s flickr integration and ease of use.
If you’re over 30, viddler is awesome. Under 25, vimeo has the hipness. Both have reason to keep on keeping on in the youtube era.
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At the end of the video the “Click here to read them” text is what takes you to the video’s page.
Vimeo just deleted all of my videos without warning or specific explanation. Once I wrote back to them asking for explanations they have provided none. I have an account there since 4 years with lots of good videos, just like I do on all major video sharing sites. It is really a shame that Vimeo did this. I invite you to share this news with others.
They deleted my videos as well, video of my uncles farm??? Its Viddler for me…