Why you will regret using Vimeo.
Posted in Reviews on: Monday, December 21, 2009 by Paul Boag
You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why… vimeo will ban you.
I was sitting enjoying some mulled wine and a mince pie when my iphone beeps with an incoming email. I debate as to whether I should check it. After all I am on holiday. Surely it could wait. However being the workaholic, I had to check.
Bloody good job I did.
The email read as follows:
We see that you are using Vimeo for uploading commercial content.
We’re sorry, but as stated in our Terms and Conditions of Use, on
our Community Guidelines page, and on the upload page itself, Vimeo is for noncommercial use only, and we cannot host this content for you. Please take 24 hours to move your videos to another hosting service.
My immediate reaction was disbelief. After all I had read their guidelines which state:
You may not upload commercials, infomercials, or demos that actively sell or promote a product or service.
I didn’t believe any of my videos fell into this category.
My second reaction was ‘crap I only have 24 hours to sort this out. There goes my relaxing evening’.
Update: I have since been able to negotiate a week to sort out my hosting.
I quickly fired off an email asking for clarification:
Could you please clarify which video you feel breaches your terms and conditions.
After a reluctance to make it clear which videos were the problem, they finally came back with this list. (note I am in the process of moving these videos elsewhere).
- All the videos on 8 Ways to Increase Ecommerce Sales
- Go Viral With Your Website
- Driving Traffic Vs. Making the Conversation
- Increase Your Website ROI
Now I could possibly understand their position over the ecommerce sales post. Although it was intended to demonstrate good practice in ecommerce, it could be seen as a case study and so a sales tool.
However, the other three include a review for a firefox plugin and two that provides marketing and sales advice.
Excluding any talk of commercial products
Apparently Vimeo does not just wish to exclude content that is commercial in nature. They also wish to exclude content that relates to commercial subjects.
My understanding is that Vimeo are excluding:
- Reviews of commercial products (even by third parties)
- Advice that could be applied to a commercial organisation even if it could equally be applied to a not-for-profit.
However, them blocking 4 videos was the least of my problems.
The most insane bit of all! No player if you have ads
But that is not the end of the story. They also ban the use of their player on any website that includes an ad of any kind (even Google Adwords).
Their guidelines state:
You may not upload videos containing ads before or after the video, unless given prior written permission from an authorized member of the Vimeo staff. Videos with any advertisements in them, including links to commercial sites, regardless of content, will be removed.
My videos do not contain ads. However, the site does and that seemed to be enough.
This means that although they are only deleting the four videos above, I cannot even embed a video from Vimeo because I have ads.
Here is what Vimeo wrote to me:
Vimeo players cannot appear on domains running ads, its a decision we made in the beginning and have been going back and forth with allowing or disallowing it, but so far we cannot allow it unless it is with one of our partners. What keeps Vimeo different is it’s content enforcement, which in turn helps foster a nice and caring community.
Let me be clear. I am not just talking about videos I create myself but any video produced by anyone. If you create a great video and host it on Vimeo, I cannot feature it on Boagworld without breaking their terms and conditions.
Surely this is insanity!
A hit and miss affair
It would seem these problems are widespread. When I tweeted about the email from Vimeo Paul Annett referred me to this post he made in the vimeo forum.
In the post he points out that Vimeo seem to quietly ignore high profile websites that break their guidelines. He also asks Vimeo to clarify their position on commercial content.
Vimeo replied with this gem:
The content policy on commerciality is largely based on intent. We ask our users to ask themselves this question: “are you uploading these videos to make a profit?” if the answer is yes, then it most likely won’t be allowed on vimeo.
You really can’t get a lot more wooly than that. I was certainly surprised to discover my content was consider commercial as I did not see it that way myself (and still don’t). Ultimately what matters is what Vimeo thinks not what I believe. And the statement above certainly makes it no clearer how they judge.
Throwing away money
What astounds me about this is that I am paying client of Vimeo. Obviously, I will now be cancelling my account. However, if they had offered me a business account then I would have taken it. I would have gladly paid to avoid the hassle of moving all of my videos.
However, Vimeo seemed more than happy to lose my business and actively ignored any appeals to ‘come to an arrangement over payment’.
A final kick in the teeth
After becoming increasingly frustrated by the email correspondence with Vimeo I eventually decided to download all of my videos and host them elsewhere.
Unfortunately I discovered that several of the videos were impossible to download. I asked for help and was informed that this was a known bug. However, they had no intention of holding off blocking my website from playing Vimeo videos.
Fortunately I had backups of all but one of the problematic videos. However, that isn’t really the point!
The bottom line
So the bottom line is this. Don’t host with Vimeo whatever your content. You cannot guarantee how it will be perceived by Vimeo and if they do take exception to it, there is no upgrade path.
Read what lessons can be learnt from my experiences with Vimeo
91 Comments
Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email
I’ve had serious Vimeo problems myself..mainly in the getting the content up onto the service in the first instance. They had problems with the processing etc. After three subsequent attempts, and reentry into the queue I gave up and moved to Youtube.
All we can hope for is a sexier Youtube skin, or indeed an easier way to embed. The latest version of WP seems to offer some hope for those of us using video in Wordpress – I’ve had success in the past with FLV player and its a trivial matter to extract the FLV from a Youtube, and skin the player.
Jeez, I didn’t know Vimeo was non-commercial only. This seems like a very stupid move by them. Will consider that for my next client work. Cheers, Paul for the heads-up.
I had no clue it was for non commercial use either! It’s kind of sad. The only reason I would have taken this service is for the simplicity and elegance of their player.
There is nothing shocking about any of this to me. I guess that not everyone reads the TOS, but the non-commercial clause has been in there for a long time.
I believe that it comes down to fair use. YouTube, Google and Facebook are under intense pressure to share their ad revenue with record labels, TV studios, etc… who produced the content that many end-users are using as soundtracks, mashups, etc…. Both YT and FB are obnoxious in that you can’t upload a video of your kid with a song playing in the background without it getting flagged and usually muted.
Vimeo allows artists (read: artists, not businessmen) to use Fair Use media in a more free way, and it’s only possible because of its lack of commercial interest.
I sympathize with your plight, but you picked the wrong hosting service for your needs. You should check out Revver.com, fliggo.com, or other video sites that cater to commercial needs. Vimeo needs to stay free of business to keep its artistic community.
I did warn people about this a couple of months ago
http://andybeard.eu/2337/vimeo-commercial-use.html
They make it clear in a number of places their commercial use policy
I knew about their none commercial clause (yep am one of those nerds that read the small print) but think its silly (bordering on stupid) seeing their marketting seems to be aimed at proffeionals who dont think YouTube is good enough. I work for a multinational company and tried to get them to choose vimeo but had to agree to go with YouTube as the benefits of YouTube far outweighs sharper video of vimeo, cos of their restrictions.
Wow! This story is absolutely shocking to me. We use Vimeo at our company and are now highly highly reconsidering. May I ask who you switched all your videos to?
PSDTUTS moved to blip.tv and it works great for us.
Wow. They really need to rethink their terms and conditions or risk losing many of their users to things like this.
Upon reading this article, I rated this post and got the ‘thank you’ video come up, hosted on Vimeo. In it, you plug not only your agency ‘Headscape’ but also your book, the website owner’s manual. Nothing wrong with this per se, except that this is probably part of what Video consider to be against their terms and conditions. I do think Vimeo are being quite retarded about the whole thing however.
Yeah that is one of the videos that needs replacing. However, it is interesting to note they did not have a problem with that video! How insane is that.
Hey Grant, I see your point but if Paul pays for a service I still dont understand why its any of their business what its for. I can understand if it was a free service. This is the reason why YouTube will continue to thrive abov all the others. I was really keen on vimeo until I read the small print. Left only a few tutorials on it cos I cant start sifting through all my videos to see which one contradicts their terms, especially as most of the stuff I do is commercial.
Your video thanks for rating the post (hosted on Vimeo) seems pretty ironic now!
BUMMER. And good work on documenting the situation. I’m generally a fan of Blip.tv, who have no upload limits even on free accounts, and have you-get-what-you-upload if it’s in Flash to begin with, very customizeable/brandable player, etc. However they have the same restriction on not having it be commercial content/an advertisement. I would tend to think that all your stuff would be fine.
This is just sad, thanks for the heads up.
On the subject of downloading videos: You can easily do that with Videobox (http://www.tastyapps.com – videobox dot com is pretty NSFW).
That’s gobsmacking! What a bizarre way to treat customers. I’m bummed that I can’t use and recommend Vimeo for clients anymore. That leaves Viddler (thinks: better go check their terms too.)
Well done, Vimeo. What a way to alienate users.
Wow, I had read the policy and none of the videos produced by/for myself are trying to sell any product or service (the same goes for the client videos I produce) however my client’s sites as well as mine do have ads on them. Not many but a couple, so this will be a HUGE issue. I had thought that by complying with not having ads on the videos or trying to sell a product with them, I was well withing the compliance. The fact that they not only made an subjective decision on what the “intent” of your videos were but handled the resolution in such a manner is mind-boggling. It would have been a much better branding practice to make arrangements for a business account and assist you with that one e-commerce video and that would have been everything squared away. The fact that their system was not working as it should and thereby you could not get your videos to download (nor their assistance in the matter) has dealt a blow to their company image. I ask “who is next?” Experiences spread quickly and this practice will not go unnoticed I am sure. Either have the same policy across the board (although I think it is severely incorrect) or do not allow some “more popular” sites to go under the radar. Wondering what Vimeo has to say about that aspect.
I create video tutorials for Photoshop and they asked me to take the videos down because they where on a site that had ads. All our video tutorials are free to view and have no ads in them at all, just lessons.
I know a couple of video production sites that work in the same way, but seem to be unaffected?
One suggestion would be to get an Amazon S3 account to host your video on and then use something like Flowplayer (http://flowplayer.org/) to embed them on your site. A bit more hassle at the outset but once you are all set up with your workflow not too much of a pain and you stay in control of your content.
Looks like Amazon S3 isn’t available outside of US and EU. Any thought? I’m based in India and I make video tutorials for web professionals that I host in Vimeo.
Hey Partha, actually Amazon’s S3 just *hosts* video in the US or EU, but they’ll take customers from anywhere. I’m in Australia and use it for video hosting with no hassle.
Check out their FAQ (last question): http://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/
Ian
It’s arguable that by having adverts on Boagworld, along with quite direct links to Headscape, the website becomes for-profit, at least in some sense of the word. By posting popular content you’re getting more views, hence better ad revenue and potential clients. I’m not saying Vimeo’s judgement is correct, I just don’t think the situation is as clear-cut as you make out.
I do agree that Vimeo are stupid not to offer a commercial service and their current rules are way too vague and restrictive. My hope is that situations like this open their eyes to the demands of their paying customers.
Nothing like a bitter post! Hopefully not fired off in anger. In theory i am in favour of vimeo’s tough stance. After all, vimeo is no youtube. It is meant to be a more creative video service. It has one of the best sites, interfaces, player and, well, content!
BUT
how on earth are they going to police this? Surely everyone makes everything for commercial gain although not always for an obvious reason. Your videos were educational and while they did serve commercial gain to you it was indirect. I am a massive fan of vimeo but i am gutted about this. I think your rant is a bit un-fair as i would always recommend it to friends. If you had know about these strict T’s and C’s you would not have posted the videos. it videos like yours which have made vimeo as popular.
I believe the 37signals crew ran into the same issue with Vimeo last year when they redid their product branding sites. They had all of their videos on Vimeo and then one day I noticed were switched to a Viddler business account…
i like vimeo but this sounds horrible. good to know!
btw: you can download your videos with this service: http://icyvideo.com/
Yah, we ran into this last year as well with the sites in the Tuts+ network. We switched over to Blip.tv and it’s been working well for us. We publish weekly vids on Psdtuts+ for example and it’s working great after the switch.
Too bad you had to go through this as well. Unfortunately, even when we do interviews we can’t link up to a video an artist produced if it’s posted on Vimeo. A bit impractical of a stance for their site. Almost every blog has some kind of commercial aspect to it in the design world.
I don’t care if you’d been hosting adverts for Al Quaeda .. 24 hours notice before they take your content down is a totally unacceptable way to treat a paying client.
Sorry, but they’ve got zero sympathy from me. You expect c*** like that from eBay and Google .. but a smaller company should still care about their clients.
An email saying – “we think you’ve breached our terms, if you disagree, please can you tell us why you shouldn’t have your content deleted in the next 7 days.” would be ok .. but this kind of arbitrary way of dealing with their customer base is stupid, short sighted and unfair.
And as for Vimeo’s terms .. bah humbug!!!
They’re going to lose a lot of customers over this .. especially if they’re stupid enough to piss off well -followed industry folks like yourself Paul Annett at Clearleft.
Seriously unimpressed, and I’ve just advised 3 clients to host videos elsewhere .. and will be doing it with some videos I’m producing.
Wow, I’m really surprised at Vimeo’s attitude, but even more so I’m disappointed as I’ve often recommended Vimeo to people who want to host HD video with them and embed it on their own site. As in most cases this would be for “commercial purposes”, I guess that this is something that Vimeo would frown upon.
It’s especially surprising that they don’t offer a business account, but at the very least that they don’t care about losing a paying customer.
I had a client who wanted the “Vimeo look” for their commercial video. So we used the JWPlayer with the Vimeo-style skin for it. I had an experience like yours previously, so I knew what to expect from Vimeo.
I don’t fault Vimeo for their policy — in fact, I think it’s wonderfully well-suited to their goals — but their implementation of that policy does leave a bit to be desired.
The real thorn in Vimeo’s side right now isn’t its commercial userbase — they have tons of loyal users who automatically cringe when they see commercial works on the site.
Vimeo’s problem is stuff like RIAA lawsuits, where it is pointed out that so many of their non-commercial, artsy users enjoy using commercial music for soundtracks without proper licensing arrangements or even attribution.
We’ve had the same issue with Vimeo in the past. I’d love to hear what service you decide to use for your videos from now on – we’re still trying to pick one. Viddler is high on the list right now.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using Vimeo to host videos – the problem comes from relying on it with no backup plan. Personally I upload my videos to several different sites so that I can change location if need be.
I agree with the others, I’d love to hear which service you go with as I’m considering picking up on myself in the future.
But more than just which you go with I’d love to know what your short list was, why they were on it and how you discounted each in turn.
We had _very_ similar issues with Vimeo, and they nearly ruined major trade show coverage for us:
http://tech.icrontic.com/article/the-seedy-underside-of-vimeo/
I concur 100%: Don’t use Vimeo. We’ve had a much better experience with Viddler.
I was also banned by Vimeo for ‘commercial use’.
It is great that they have high ideals and want to keep it commercial-free. They should, however, treat all customers equally. If they’re going to ban one customer for a policy violation, they should ban them all. Even the “cool” ones. http://vimeo.com/7667667
I feel exactly the same way.
I love vimeo because they don’t allow commercial content, but the policy has to apply across the board, including all the cool videos by agencies, motion designers and videographers who use vimeo to link bait Fubiz.
OR they could let all that cool content stay, and let Paul stay, and let the community decide which videos they want to watch. Yes that might mean the site doesn’t consist entirely of videos shot by rich kids with digital SLRs, but if that’s what vimeo wants they should say so instead of hiding behind the commercial content policy.
Paul, maybe if you had used a Canon 7D to give your videos that fancy handheld out-of-focus look, and thrown in some After Effects for good measure, they would have let you stay ;)
I agree! It’s fine for them to do what they want with their site, but they lose a lot of credibility by not enforcing this rule on the “cool” startups they host.
what a shame….. I can’t believe this story and how badly Vimeo is dealing with this…
I am using Vimeo for my animation students, to show their work and indirectly promote our course (eg: http://diganimation.info/wp/2009/jane-morton/). I chose Vimeo as I like their site, the player options – and mainly the option to embed…. We don’t have any ads on our site but the fact that my students’ clips might not be shared as freely as I thought is contrary to why I chose it in the first place…
seriously reconsidering options now….
Thanks, Paul.
I knew that you couldn’t host commercial type videos on Vimeo, however the line about placing Vimeo videos on websites that have advertising on them is just insanity. How the heck are they going to police that?
You may also want to check out a service we run called VideoPress: http://videopress.com. We have many commercial sites using it, both on WordPress.com and on their own self-hosted sites, and we have a VIP tier if you are interested in customizing the look & feel and need ad-integration.
And like WordPress and our other projects, the whole VideoPress solution framework is open source and you can run it on your own.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me directly: http://raanan.com/contact-me/
How ironic that Vimeo almost pioneered a PAID video service but only allows usage if the money You PAY them can’t come via the videos in any possible way.
Adios Vimeo – from a customer that actually loved that you charged for your service
I agree. My experience has been less than stellar. We paid for a business account and I posted recordings of presentations I gave at events — like Social Media 101. Our account is not deleted. The videos are still there, so I assume the account has not been deleted. However, I cannot log in, the Forgot Password does not work and e-mails and tweets to them have not been answered.
I wish someone would answer a request for help. If there are better services, please let me know.
I personally am extremely happy that vimeo take this stance as it is what makes their site unique. While you seem incredulous that they treat your content in this manner, the website was simply not built for branding, marketing, or other promotions or even anything that falls close.
Vimeo showcases a wide array of breathtakingly beautiful videos on a diverse and eye opening range of subjects, The last thing they need is to be inundated by white bread videos on sales and traffic generation, its only a short leap from that to get rich quick spam and I would hate to see the last bastion of quality video content bastardized in such a way.
Also please don’t take this as an insult, I am merely asking you not to get so offended by their decision as (in my humble opinion) if it preserves their quality levels it was worth losing your custom over.
Kyle, I love vimeo as much as you, but the problem is that many of those breathtakingly beautiful videos are just as commercial as anything Paul has put up.
Paul (for argument’s sake…) used vimeo to promote his web design services, and thousands of other users are using vimeo to promote their motion graphics, videography or advertising services.
The problem is the blatant double standards at work here, and vimeo hiding behind the “We only remove flagged content, we can’t help it if nobody flags the content that we find cool” argument.
All absolutely on point.
while I am in the people need housing business, I felt I fill a topical need with clients that are interested in Aging Parent or First Time Buyer Issues.
Maybe I am also crossing their line with Advertorials
Youtube Hosts for free and they have incredible seo contribution.
Video is the newest way to connect.
David Pylyp
Living in Toronto
Vimeo is pretty explicit in their T&C that they are not for commercial video of any type. However because this is only enforced due to reporting of video by other user it creates a massive perception disconnect.
I think many people see commercial content on Vimeo (especially a lot of Web App Startups) and assume it’s ok. Who reads T&Cs really? I often don’t and most people don’t or gloss over them. But if you read their T&Cs and still see a lot of commercial content then you assume it’s ok. Contrast this to say porn (also not allowed) which is entirely not present, so no one thinks you can use Vimeo for porn.
I run competitor of Vimeo’s called http://vzaar.com, which is designed to serve commercial content. We have a lot of former Vimeo users who have been kicked off for breach of T&Cs. When we speak to them the common thing we hear is that “Well I didn’t know, and I saw other commercial content”.
Obviously for us it would be far better if Vimeo was more explicit about this and policed it better. But it would also be a lot better for their users who would not go through the issue you have above, which creates a far greater degree of stress than looking for a commercial video provider in the first place.
I am so (PAINFULLY!) aware of this very same problem as it happened to me just last month.
I returned from a conference where Vimeo was being touted as the ‘be all and end all’ for posting videos you’d like to use to share or embed in a website.
Upon returning home, I dutifully signed up for a Vimeo premium account and uploaded 4 short videos to get a sense of how the service worked. I had a problem with the playback audio not being in synch with the video and posted a question in the Vimeo HELP forum.
A day later I too received an email notice that my information was judged to be ‘commercial’ and my account was being terminated. I was given the perfunctory one week to “move it or lose it”. Nice!
Ironically, the company that touted the Vimeo service is blatantly using it in a commercial manner.
I, however, was using it for educational purposes and not selling access to my video content. No matter.
I found the Vimeo staff to be so insulated and disaffected that it surprised me they are able to enjoy a commercial success of their service. I finally got an email response to my inquiry about what part of my videos were ‘in violation’ of their guidelines (I’m no attorney, but I know how to steer clear of a problem legally-speaking and I truly felt I was NOT in violation of anything).
They didn’t provide specifics. Just “Your content was deemed in violation”. There was a comment that drove me to distraction though. The Vimeo response was that, in effect . . . “although any violation is grounds for termination of an account, Vimeo is not the police” (Oh, really!) and they “reserve the right to act on any account holder who is found to be in violation of their guidelines”.
Give me a break!
If they would care to look around on the internet, their Vimeo service is being used quite blatantly by many people on sites where, not only are ads being displayed, but the Vimeo video is being used to pitch a commercial offer and request a sale! THAT . . . is about as ‘commercial’ as you can get.
But, the enforcement of the Vimeo guidelines is quite arbitrary and capricious. Not what you’d consider a good policy or practice to engender goodwill with the customer community, is it?
Unfortunately, Vimeo has chosen to be perceived as an elitist little group (in fairness, maybe they really aren’t, but actions speak louder than words, right?) of narcissistic individuals who rule their service with a callous disregard for the people who are (or, were) willing to invest money in their service.
For me, I found a delightful person at Viddler.com who was only too happy to learn of my travails at the hands of Vimeo’s ‘Video Police’ and has provided me with what, I feel, is an even easier interface that is less buggy than Vimeo’s and far more easily used . . . for educational or for commercial usage.
S’long Vimeo . . . I hope your attitude and (lack of) gratitude returns the same value to you as you’ve wielded on me.
Seems ridiculous and totally biased to companie thatight be benificial to vimeo! Such as woothemes, they’re all ways flogging their stuff through vimeo.
So tell us then Paul, what are you going to use instead?
What a waste of their beautiful platform! Are they creating any sort of value for their paying customers? It sure doesn’t seem like it. If I want to post a video that’s “just for fun”, I’ve got YouTube for that. No thanks, Vimeo.
So, the question is: should we flag threadless’ videos (and others) and see if Vimeo takes them down?
*wink* ;)
good on you fella! for posting this indepth article on vimeo, im extremely unhappy with them too, i signed up for a vimeo plus account, and its pretty much useless to me now becuase of these terms and conditions, what the hell is wrong with these people, dont they want to grown? i do like vimeo’s setup, their player looks good, you get to have great quality video with pretty good privacy controls and player customisation, but thats where it ends.
the guy above me mentioned threadless, your right mate, its such a grey area, i know a guy that has a very popular blog site, he hotss a lot of videos on their, he doesnt sell anything, but he has a lot of ads on his site.
A lesson to all businesses, research your complaints and make sure that the person doesn’t have a large social media following!
Hmm, Vimeo just locked the support thread they said they wouldn’t lock. Mis-communication? Scared? Who knows. My opinion of them as a reliable company is decreasing by the minute, I’ll be cancelling my pro account at this rate.
what a nightmare!
thanx for the heads-up. I was not aware of these quirks..
Weird. Sorry you had to deal with crap like this on the holidays, Paul.
I’ve listened to folks complain about Vimeo for quite some time, but I don’t use them so I could only make a mental note to avoid their service. Viddler seems to be a much better choice.
Thanks for sharing your troubles. On the bright side: you may help save somebody else from having to deal with this. :)
Most videos I watch on vimeo are showreels-promotional videos which are probably more commercial than the videos you uploaded. They do seem to operate a double standard to perpetuate their ‘YouTube for cool people’ brand. But then, that’s what I like about them in a way. They should just reword their t&c to better represent their attitude. Something like: “upload anything then we’ll decide what stays”.
Geeze. Thanks for the heads-up Paul. I recently bought a vimeo account so I could upload help videos for my clients. The vimeo system seemed to allow me to set privacy the way I needed to. Even though I’m not technically selling something in the videos, they are part of my user support and I wonder if that will be viewed by Vimeo as commercial.
Glad I read this. I was considering using them for some of my videos.
Cheers!
Sorry to hear you had a run in with Vimeo, it kinda sucks that you’re a paying ‘plus’ account holder but hardly surprising that you’ve run into trouble. Vimeo have always had a holier-than-thou feel and for that reason we’re expected to tow the line or use another service.
Outrageous policy? Atrocious customer service?One rule for them and another for us? Welcome to capitalist Hell, Vimeo are in business to
make money, if you don’t like what they do, get out of their way.
Ho Ho Ho! Merry Christmas.
I think Vimeo have shoot themselves in the foot with this one. A lot of web folk are closely linked through multiple social networks that this story will get told. I am sure people will now reconsider before using Vimeo themselves or recommending Vimeo products to any of their clients. A massive lost lead to Vimeo will miss out on potential revenue.
Wow, I was looking for somewhere to host videos myself and considered Vimeo. In fact it was at the top of my list… until now! I just got a tweet directing me to this page and I will continue my search elsewhere. I can’t believe they have a TOS like that. I mean pretty much anything can be considered “commercial” the way they look at it!
Hopefully you will get things sorted out and the next site will work out for you!
You could argue that virtually ALL video has a commercial angle. If you make a great film, for example, the film itself may not be commercial in any way but the director would be very happy if he or she won new work because of the quality of the film.
Exactly! Their target audience are not making these films to show to two friends, they are creating show reals to get commercial work, they are advertising themselves! If they do not want you to embed the videos then they need to remove that feature. It is impossible to police.
If you randomly click on any video on vimeo you will find a link to a blog that has ads, its just the way it is.
I have another good reason to use YouTube vs. Vimeo: I can see YouTube videos on my mobile device; I cannot view Vimeo videos…
I’m somewhat surprised that they are so unhelpful. When face with a well known person such as yourself, I personally would have pulled out all the stops to keep you happy, not only because you’re a paid user but also influential and as such could lead on to a positive post about Vimeo.
Instead in there insanity, or just plain stubbiness they have done the complete opposite, and as such will get the polar opposite response. A negative post, negative comments on twitter, and I’m sure next year an equally negative mention on the podcast.
Surely this is customer service gone mad, as any seasoned business owner will tell you, word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools available, and it can have either a massively positive effect on a business, or in this case an equally negative effect.
Matt Auckland
Thanks for the info and heads up on this. Like many people who have posted, I have a Pro account, and will be seriously considering not renewing it.
It will be interesting if they actually pick up on this, clarify their policy, and make it very clear for future sign ups.
Think the normal course of action nowadays is to setup a facebook group called ‘we hate Vimeo’ and bring them down lol. Nothing like a good crowdsourcing excercise :p
As always, excellent points Paul!
I thought Vimeo was the bee’s knees as well, but now I’ll think twice before posting videos there.
I also agree with the above comment (although YouTube’s quality sucks) YouTube works on the iPhone!
Cheers and have a wonderful Christmas, mate!
I looked into Vimeo as well, but it’s not a good fit for the kind of videos produced by Boagworld. Vimeo isn’t just another video hosting service like YouTube. It has a specific audience it caters to — filmmakers — and that it nurtures. The terms of service are appropriate for their service and their audience. That’s why it’s important that you always thoroughly research any free (or even commercial) web service before adopting it not only to see if it matches your needs but that you match the intentions of the service as well. Vimeo is a great choice if you’re an amateur videographer who wants to produce, share and get feedback on your work; it’s not a great choice for general video podcasting.
True, but there are loads of videos on there that review video editing software and cameras. It is impossible for them to keep this up. The number of videos they have X by the number of times each video has been embedded, how on earth can they FARLY regulate which videos are being shown on sites that have adds? They cant, so my video is uploaded to vimeo, i can not show it on my site(I have ads), but anyone else can have it on theirs(I want to share it) until vimeo contacts me and tells me it is being played on a site with ads? CRAZY.
Dave, the problem is it’s not just “amateur videographers” using Vimeo. Heaps of content up there is agency or freelance motion graphics work.
Doesn’t Youtube allow everything you need to do…for free?
Sounds like Vimeo is geared toward people posting funny personal videos.
Youtube appears to be a standard…and is supported out of the box with most blog and message board software.
This is definitely an eye-opener for me. Thank you for letting me know. It surely helped as I planned to do a video series and host it on Vimeo.
But now, I will spread the word and share this post to save others from unnecessary frustration.
Once again, thanks!
I understand their position but it seems goalposts are being moved continually… what about product placement? Could I do a video blog holding a can of coke?!
I have a similar issue with content for some niche on MySpace with the difference that their support is not so much willing or able to send anything more useful than “canned” response emails.
As far as Vimeo is concerned I put them off my list a couple of month ago. One could summarize their content policy as, “We only want content created by artists. Starving artists or rich artists, we take both. But …” As previous comments show, that policy is somewhat ambiguously handled.
The whole debate and unresolved issue about commercial versus noncommercial lies on top of that issue. (Not even creative commons has sorted it out. Although they are working on a definition for well over 1.5 years now.) As a sidenote: That whole discussion made me change the license for my free content from CC-BY-NC-ND to CC-BY-SA. Because I want it to spread and don’t mind commercial context.
We had this issue with all PSDTUTS Screen-casts, I had to move them all over to blip. There are hundreds of sites that embed videos from vimeo, too many for them to monitor in fact, as a result they use a random and unfair way of enforcing their policies.
In the end, they will have to allow it as the problem (as they see it) is already so widespread.
Pity, I was looking at signing up with Vimeo because I love the clean interface over YouTube, but I think you just changed my mind.
:-/
Why cry foul when you use their service but can not respect their rules?
It is not Vimeo who is in fault here, it is you. And when they actually responded to your whining you thank their effort by writing this.
I think that it is great that they enforce their policy. I may not agree with their policy, but I sure think that it is good that they enforce it, and if it does not fit my needs: then I will not use Vimeo.
Did yo not read their rules when you created your account / uploaded your video? Then what are you crying about?
If you could take a few minutes to read the original post you will see why I believe Vimeos terms and conditions are misleading. Did you read the article before moaning about my video ;-)
And how do you suppose you monitor what advertising is on the sites that embed your video? I guess you could just make sure no one can embed it by removing that feature? I think their terms are a joke and unenforceable in any fair way.
Is this the same Vimeo that not only allowed the Honda Insight ad to be added to their portfolio, but also enhanced the page itself: http://www.vimeo.com/4281939 ?
One rule for the “big boys” and another for the rest of us, eh?
i’ve known about their inconsistent policies for a while. i think this makes them one of the worst companies out there.
anyways there is no magic formula – if you encode flash videos yourself you can get just as high a quality, plus the advantage of a branded player. there’s the one that comes with adobe flash, and sorenson squeeze.
this post should remind us that our content is safe almost nowhere, but the safest place has to be on your own servers. i do agree that blip rocks though.
I actually started uploading to youtube for a project I’m doing, its non-profit, but I put my name on it as produced by Me.com.
I then started playing around with vimeo, then discovered their upload per week limit, so far so good, so I quickly purchased the plus account so I can upload up to 5Gig per week, enough for me so far.
I then got disgusted with tier player, where at the end its all “play other videos here at vimeo” linked to death.
I emailed them about how they say I didn’t have to deal with any commerical ads at all (I assumed in the plus account $69.95), but all those links, and click here to see more video crap – all basically says redirect my viewers to your service.
anyway, it was way to loud at the end of my videos, so I emailed them, hey, whats all this crap at the end of the video, and how do I remove it. Well, about the same time I found pro-player for wordpress, and that worked as far as cutting out vimeo’s visually loud player. But only for a while it seems, because shortly there after, oh about an hour, as I was till updating the html for the embedded video in the article, all the vimeo videos, when clicked, would read something like – unable to access or not authorized to access video error.
Well, I thought it was because of the pro-player – which was doing its job really well by cutting out the loud visuals by the vimeo player, especially at the end (no more little thumbnails redirecting you to vimeo).
Well, I assumed that, and then started researching the failure to play, perhaps it was something I was doing, and not necessarily vimeo baning my IP.
I came across this post, and read it all the way down.
Well, of course, since I got that error, I quickly redifined my pro-player code to pull the youtube video urls and not the vimeo ones.
So, I may be having this problem for 2 reasons 1) using the pro-player, which cuts vimeo out of the visual loop, or 2) my me.com reference in my videos was too much for vimeo to handle.
The guess work, is what is doing if for me. I can’t put something up, and walk away thinking at any given mement vimeo is going to classify my work as a violation of TOC. Then, I run into somebody who says “Hey, what happendto the video, I can’t play it…” That will make me look like shit.
So, I then went to that Honda link, and what a piece of shit vimeo is for allowing that commercially oriented content up there, while treating other people differently. Al-be-it, the honda video was glossy, but because of money invested in its production – i.e, vimeo’s little rich kid marketing? I also notice that all those community directors look like wanna-be steven spielbergs, or something, with those beards.
Well, I almost shot off an email to them requesting a refund for the plus account fees Ijust paid them two days ago. but I didn’t have the link tothis post to refer to in my email.
I then decided to give it one last try to verify that my content still was not streaming using the pro-player.
Well, it was playing again? Was it just a glitch? Or did vimeo really track the fact that I had used pro-player and cut them out – all within a hour?
So, I held off with the email, but still, the bitter taste of unpredictability is in my mouth,and I’m sorry to say, doesn’t seem like its going to leave anytime soon.
By the way, as far as youtube is concerned, what is the problem, I know the get choppy around 4 pm, rush hour time, but, if you upload a decent video there, it seems to play. Yea, you get the “youtube” watermark, but is there anything else?
I’ll check out blip, viddler, and the others, just so I can have piece of mind when I walk away from my servers at the end of the night.
You can check on my progress by going to http://151aviation.com/news/2009/11/07/2009_11_07_h-co-171st-change-of-command-robins-afb-ga-10.htmland see if vimeo is stillthere, its the one that says “test copy”.
Paul while I share your pain, I do rather *like* the strict rules and their ability to uphold them. It keeps Vimeo neat and tidy. But agreed, their wording could be tighter.
I’ve never used Vimeo and I didn’t know all this. Sure some reasons not to use Vimeo in the future.
Now count to 10 Paul and have a nice holiday:)
I never knew this about Vimeo because I’ve never uploaded a video anywhere on the web. One thing that I DID notice is that whenever I stumble across a Vimeo video, it’s almost always good quality content, and interesting stuff. Often made by budding film makers, and not just some kid with a webcam or a camera pointed at a box full of puppies.
It seems as though they are trying to differentiate themselves from the myriad of video sites out there that allow anything and everything. Yes, it does seem that they are a little strict with their policy, and it might be their downfall. But it’s also possible that their rules will set them apart from the rest.
Happy Christmas, get yourself over to http://buto.tv – online video publishing platform
Guys, the terms of use are quite clear on the commercial part :
You may not upload commercials, infomercials, or demos that actively sell or promote a product or service.
- Exceptions: independent production companies, authors, musicians, non profits, churches, artists, and actors may show or promote the work they have created.
- We reserve the right to allow certain commercial content for those businesses who have coordinated sponsored advertising campaigns or direct partnerships with Vimeo.
You may not agree with it, but the rules are clear and stated. Yes there is a double standard but it’s intended and stated clearly. If you’re not happy with it, than Vimeo isn’t for you.
Just an FYI-
blip.tv did the same thing to us about a year ago with NO warning, on a day when we had received some pretty good press and were getting a lot of hits at our site. Like I said, no warning at all. Yes they had the non-commercial thing in their TOS but there were plenty of sites at the time that were using blip.tv for product demos, just like we were. It seemed that they were very selective about how they enforced their TOS which left a very bad taste in our mouth.
Thanks for the heads up on Vimeo’s restrictions. I stopped using Vimeo a while ago when I realized that Youtube offered HD rendering and embedding for free. I love your podcast, by the way.
or try Docler.hu , it will goes internation in few weeks, but u can share HD movies, longer than 10 min, and embed to your site.