YouTube is one of those internet heavyweights that seems untouchable. It’s the biggest name in online videos, and by a large margin. While the company name hasn’t yet become a widely-used verb in the vein of parent corporation Google, it’s well on its way to such linguistic-recognized ubiquity. And the scary thing for other online video sites is that thanks to Google’s financial largess, YouTube is able to experiment with interesting content and service decisions–such as movie rentals–which won’t necessarily be profitable in the short-term.
So what’s a competitor to do? Give up? Find a different industry? While many companies have been forced by the Google behemoth to take to new projects, video-hosting site Vimeo is aiming to avoid such a fate. The video site has carved a niche for itself, positioning itself as the go-to destination for creative, non-commercial videos. This is clearly expressed on Vimeo’s Community Guidelines page, which contains a multitude of such gems as:
Vimeo is not a sea of eyeballs that you must trick into increasing your view count. It is a vibrant community of intelligent and creative people. We strongly encourage you to find people who share your interests and connect with them here. The more you interact with the community, the more interest in your work there will be. Get involved and you will enjoy the rewarding experience that Vimeo can provide.
Vimeo has gone beyond this mission statement to insert itself in the online video conversation through two innovations.
Let’s hear from Mashable’s Samuel Axon for the first:
Vimeo has just rolled out a suite of advanced analytics features dubbed Vimeo Plus Stats. It’s only available to Vimeo Plus users at present.
With Plus Stats you can track plays, loads, finishes, comments and likes for all of the videos uploaded on your account over any time period you define. You can break down plays and loads by country, and you can see how many embed loads and plays occur at each domain — Tumblr or Facebook, for example. You can even break it down by high definition and standard definition to see what quality your viewers are choosing to watch.
All that data can be exported to a spreadsheet file, too. Vimeo has been tracking the data for months, but not for its entire lifespan.
YouTube might be the place to be for mass-market videos (or those hoping to create the next mass-market offering), but there’s plenty of room in a booming field for a more sophisticated and higher-end–yet still rather affordable–option.
The second track Vimeo has pursued recently is exclusivity, expressed most notably by hosting this beautiful ad for Frito-Lay salsa. Yes, I just called that ad beautiful. I would embed it here, but you need to watch it on the Vimeo site to unlock the complete experience. The YouTube version misses out on all the fun. We’ve seem some interactivity innovations attempted by YouTube and here’s a worthy counter-punch by Vimeo.
Vimeo demonstrates that sophistication, innovation, and quality can allow a company to find its place in any market, even one with a YouTube-like leviathan. What’s the niche that you’re aiming for? What are you doing to get there?
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