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:-

1. Walking a tightrope with a demand to take their content down imminent
2. 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
3. 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.

Their terms of service mentions it

The signup page mentions it clearly… below the fold it is however very easy to miss.

You could also take a look at their community guidelines

It is just as clear within their FAQ

The only place it isn’t 100% is their page for Vimeo Plus – you would expect if you were paying for the service you would be able to use it commercially.

I like Vimeo, the encoding is high quality and they use a top tier CDN (Bitgravity) so even here in Poland the video is relatively smooth even on a low end ADSL connection.
They also have some cool domain locking features which would make it perfect for the members area of a commercial membership site.

There isn’t any lapse in communication of their commercial terms as can be seen by this recent forum thread.

Either a lot of very high profile sites have somehow been overlooked by Vimeo, or they have some kind of alternative arrangement – I am sure they love the Google juice, but isn’t that then payment in kind for links?
However it is also quite possible they don’t realise that they are breaking the Vimeo terms of service. I have had to point it out multiple times in the last 2 weeks to friends, so I am sure this is a common occurrence.

Ramifications? I know Master New Media had their account deleted and they could easily turn around and send you a huge bandwidth bill or threaten legal action. Vimeo’s parnet company however is IAC… why haven’t they offered a commercial option yet?

I have some posts lined up covering lots of alternatives with various advantages.

What are your favorite video hosts, CDNs and FLV Players?