Type | Subsidiary, limited liability company | ||
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Founded | November 2004 | ||
Founder(s) | Zach Klein, Jake Lodwick | ||
Headquarters | New York City, New York, United States | ||
Area served | Worldwide | ||
Key people | Dae Mellencamp (CEO) | ||
Owner | IAC (2004–present) | ||
Website | Vimeo.com | ||
Alexa rank | 110 (January 2012[update])[1] | ||
Type of site | Video hosting service | ||
Advertising | IAC Advertising | ||
Registration | Optional | ||
Available in | English | ||
Current status | Active | ||
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Vimeo /ˈvɪmiːoʊ/[2] is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. It was founded by Zach Klein and Jake Lodwick in November 2004. The name Vimeo was created by co-founder Jake Lodwick and is a play on the word video, inserting the word "me" as a reference to the site's exclusive dedication to user-made video, and is also an anagram of "movie."[3]
Vimeo does not allow gaming videos,[4] pornography, or anything not created by the user to be hosted on the site.[5]
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As of March 2010[update], Vimeo has over 900,000 members and an average of more than 16,000 new videos uploaded daily.[6] Roughly 10% of uploads are in HD.[7]
The community of Vimeo is large and filled with indie filmmakers and vast numbers of people with a passion for film. The Vimeo community has adopted the name Vimeans, meaning a member of the Vimeo community, usually one who is active and engaged with fellow users on a regular basis.
Numerous popular musicians use or have used Vimeo to upload various music videos and other content, including M.I.A., Kanye West, Tom Delonge, Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Beck, Placebo, Lykke Li, Röyksopp, Devin the Dude, Björk and Britney Spears, who premiered her new music video Radar there. Comedians Kristen Schaal, Reggie Watts, and "Weird Al" Yankovic use Vimeo as well.
The White House posts high-definition versions of its broadcasts to Vimeo.
Vimeo has helped to offload traffic from Improv Everywhere's servers after new pranks are announced, and continues to host most of their videos. Vimeo was also the original location of Noah Kalina's "everyday" video,[8] a popular viral video.
On October 17, 2007, Vimeo announced support for High Definition playback in 1280x720 (720p), becoming the first video sharing site to support consumer HD. [9] Uploaded HD videos were automatically converted into 720/30p VP6 Flash video. Since August 2010, all videos are encoded into H.264 for HTML5 support. All videos uploaded before were re-encoded. Non-HD videos re-encode at a maximum of 30 frame/s and they also have significantly higher bitrates than other competing video sharing sites. Non-Plus users can upload up to 500 MB of videos per week, and up to one HD video per week (additional HD videos uploaded within the same week are encoded to SD).
On October 16, 2008, Vimeo unveiled its $60-per-year 'Vimeo Plus' package, which allows users additional weekly uploads (up to 5 GB), unlimited HD videos, unlimited creation of channels, groups and albums, no ads, HD embeds, 2-pass video re-encoding that results in higher quality, priority encoding, and more. The arrival of Vimeo Plus also meant the downgrade of the free version, which up to that point also enjoyed unlimited HD re-encodings per week and unlimited creation of groups/albums/channels.
Since February 2010, Plus users can choose to re-encode their 1080p upload as either 1080p or 720p. As of July 22nd, 2010, the site offers unlimited HD embeds.[10] As of January 4, 2011, Vimeo Plus users can upload up to five gigabytes of footage, roughly equivalent to 2.5 hours of HD video.[11] This makes it possible for full length, high-definition feature films to be uploaded to Vimeo by Vimeo Plus users.
On August 1, 2011, Vimeo introduced the PRO account type for business and commercial use, which allows 50GB of storage, 250k plays, advanced analytics, third party video player support and more.
Everyone except "small scale independent production companies, non-profits, and artists who want to use the Vimeo Service to showcase or promote their own creative works"[12] must become Vimeo PRO subscribers in order to upload commercial videos or use Vimeo for their business's video hosting needs.
Vimeo's first annual Vimeo Awards took place October 8-9, 2010 in New York City, dedicated towards showcasing and awarding creative video content hosted on the site.[13] Festival judges for the nine competitive categories included David Lynch, Morgan Spurlock, Rian Johnson, M.I.A., and Charlie White.[14] The competition received over 6500 entries. Winners were chosen for each category, with the documentary finalist "Last Minutes with Oden" taking home the $25,000 grand prize. Ben Briand's short narrative "Apricot" won the Community Choice Award.
The two-day festival included video screenings and workshops from the likes of Philip Bloom, Lawrence Lessig, and DJ Spooky, and an award show hosted by Ze Frank. A 3D projection-mapping displayed on the Vimeo HQ/IAC building concluded the festival.
On July 21, 2008, Vimeo announced that for several reasons they would no longer allow gaming videos, one reason being that:
"Gaming videos are by nature significantly larger and longer than any other genre on Vimeo. Over these last few months they have been the single biggest reasons for our transcoder wait times."—Blake Whitman, Community Director[4]
Existing gaming videos were deleted on September 1, 2008. All new uploads are currently subject to this rule.
However, machinima videos with a story of their own are still permitted.[15]
Access to Vimeo is blocked in China and Iran.
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