Paul had a nasty Christmas present, an email notifying him that his training videos were in breach of Vimeo’s no commercial use policy.
You could believe his shock, with so many popular tech, web design & SEO blogs being allowed to flaunt the rules.
A couple of months ago I pointed out that Vimeo isn’t for commercial use , but that message seems to be largely ignored.
To me it seems that any large commercial undertaking using Vimeo fits one of the following scenarios:-
- Walking a tightrope with a demand to take their content down imminent
- In some barter arrangement for link juice worth far more than any blogger has probably ever received for a paid post – I wonder what the FTC would think? It certainly influences a lot of businesses to use something they shouldn’t
- Blindly walking a path of ignorance having not checked terms of service before signing up
The most prominent I have seen using Vimeo are Read Write Web, Techcrunch and in the SEO community Seomoz
There are tons of commercial funded startups who use Vimeo on their home pages.
Over the Christmas quiet spell I would suggest taking your videos and links away from Vimeo, and let Vimeo stagnate in a non-commercial world.
I have never really understood why anyone creating public facing videos would use Vimeo anyway, their primary saving grace are their privacy controls which would be ideal for membership sites if not for the commercial use barrier.
32 Comments
I don’t use Vimeo, but after reading this, now I know I never will… and I agree… let them stagnate in a non-commercial world…
I was wondering how SEOmoz is able to get their whiteboard friday videos to stay on Vimeo, and now I may know. :)
I’ve had my channel taken down because my video SEO tutorials were considered to be commercial. I don’t sell anything in my videos or directly on my blog, so I wrote an email to Vimeo politely asking them to reconsider but never heard back.
I really don’t understand where this “100% non-commerical” idea is coming from.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Vimeo to bits – especially when I could mess around with HD videos loooong before YouTube and anyone else offered them …
But they’re seriously missing a trick not to offer a Business Account for (say) $10/month.
I’d snap one up in a shot.
I really hope they know what they’re doing as I’d hate to see them die …
Cheers
Nick :)
Is this true?! I just poeted some of my videos at vimeo. I think I made a mistake.
absolutely, they have hung their own rope! looks like a video sharing community which is going out the window into the cold this Christmas.
I didn’t realise… Viddler all the way!!!
Are you paying for commercial use of Viddler? It isn’t cheap
The alternative is for Viddler to have advertising all over your videos – not a suitable alternative for a sales page, landing page or home page of a Startup.
Seems like many pick Vimeo due to their attractive player and hipness factor. Not sure anybody reads the fine print.
Blip.tv seems more well-suited for things like SEOmoz’ Whiteboard Friday.
Vimeo is, in my opinion, more of a ‘friendly’ social networking platform through video used as opposed to a commercial marketing tool and should never really be used in that way. I think the way that companies such as SEOMoz are using it in the WB Friday videos is okay because they’re not earning any money from this. They’re using these videos as a tutorial platform. If they were to start selling the articles to their PRO members only, then I would be concerned.
It is bad what they’re doing for SEOs, but good for Vimeo.
From what I understand Paul’s videos were pretty similar in many respects to what is offered by SEOmoz Whiteboard Fridays – training videos for things like eCommerce.
It is a fringe case but everything I have seen suggests that unless they have a specific exemption, SEOmoz isn’t a charity and ultimately their high quality content presells their primary service. If there is a specific exemption, who benefits? It doesn’t make sense for SEOmoz to use a platform that ultimately the majority of their own clients can’t use.
In many ways I am more critical of RWW and Techcrunch – they review video platforms but rarely if ever take into account commercial use scenarios both for their own use situations and that of their readers.
well i guess, vimeo is doing this to promote themselves. SEOs should be wise enough to choose a good site for their business.
Nice article. I got myself into trouble with them posting Chevrolet related service tutorials. I have to agree with “Nick the Geek”, in that I think they’re missing an opportunity by not offering a low-cost, paid commercial service.
For my site I am close to going for the Basic package, which starts at $250 per month… for my requirements that would suffice… (there is a chepar one)
The issue I have with Youtube is the fact that once the embedded video has played, it then display related videos instead of other videos posted by the user.
I actually only want to play music rather then video however haven’t been able to find a reliable alternative…
Do you know one Andy…
I briefly listed a few suitable players and CDNs in this post
http://andybeard.eu/2404/product-launch-manager-bonus-video-cdns.html
It still isn’t a perfect solution, but it is getting close and much more affordable
The Viddler site says it will provide “12,000 views/month of a 3-minute high quality video”
Initially thats fine however I am assuming that you can choose low quality which given the application Im using this for.
I’ve seen a lot of users using Vimeo for commercial purposes so I understand Paul’s frustration. It looks like a hit or miss thing with them. How can you use something that will potentially be a waste of your time and effort?
I don’t like using Vimeo, Because that not easy to use, I can’t see good thing from Vimeo. I waiting to open the video but just loading, no video showing at that time. That just make me confused.
SEOmoz shouldn’t be exempted from getting videos removed. Losing Vimeo for commercial use is not the end of the world either.
How about you tube? Is that same with Vimeo right? I love to using You tube, I got many useful think from there. Like sharing my experience by sharing video’s.
Your affilaite landing pages suck… oh and YouTube are known to dump publishers without any warning or discussion.
A friend told me the other day about a site called “thedirectorysuite.com”. Apparently they’re doing commercial videos for businesses. Told me that they are uploading them free. Don’t know how true that is though.
Looks to be 720GBP a year to have your video on a site with no traffic – oh but you do get to add 200 words, 30 meta keywords and 200 words in a meta desciption.
The Directory Suite doesn’t seem to represent value unless you have no idea how to use a Flip video camera (my 3 year old could use one… a year ago)
I find Vimeo quite slow, slows down my browser on ubuntu and the videos and actually never load. Why use it for marketing anyway when it does not even work properly for everyone?
I have had many problems with Vimeo especially when it comes to posting videos. I think it’s pretty much if the face fits so to speak. Having said that, I’ve come across this type of discrimination across many sites where there commercial rules are often violated but don’t seem to do anything, that is until I try posting similar then all hell breaks loose, even to the point of getting banned. One site in particular was scribd.
I’ve moved all vids to youtube for now…
I think the way that companies such as SEOMoz are using it in the WB Friday videos is okay because they’re not earning any money from this. let the Vimeo stagnate in a non-commercial world…It looks like a hit or miss thing with them.
You think SEOmoz is a charity?
They have actually now switched to a custom player
Yes, my videos got booted too.
I’m a real estate agent and they stated that property videos were of “commercial intent”… well, uh, yeah, obviously… but how are videos with a baby dancing or bloopers more valuable?
Ugh!
I’ve had my channel taken down because my video SEO tutorials were considered to be commercial.
I just got a vblog commercial WordPress theme with Vimeo all over it. The theme had lots of demo videos from Vimeo. I was thinking of going with vimeo. Luckily, I haven’t posted any videos or posts yet. Looks like I will have to use AS3.
thanks for the heads up!
I’ve had my channel taken down because my video SEO tutorials were considered to be commercial.
I see your point BUT…..my last company that I worked for was a video production company, Vimeo is the “creative community” defacto video repository…much like YouTube is for the rest of the non-creative world. For whatever reason the “creative” community embraces it. For me the marketer, I have to post videos in multiple areas to cater to both the creative and non-creative viewers. Hosted solutions work out best but they lose the promotional touch that both of these places offer. I stick to YouTube now until a better solution comes along…Its all about catering to your targeted customer base right?
Let them stagnate in the non-commercial world. Although i am not using vimeo, but i support your post that its a huge shock for those who are using it previously. SEOs should be wise enough to choose a good site for their business.