OK, Video first, and then a somewhat lengthy (but worth reading) rant:
VIMEO SUCKS – But at least they re-activated my account! from Tim Ayres – REALTOR® on Vimeo.
Yesterday I received a message from Vimeo, which is the service that I use to host my video blog. It is, in my (and many others) opinion, better than YouTube, because it offers higher quality, a better looking player, and a great community of users with far less BS comments and spam.
This message read:
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Dear Tim Ayres – REALTOR®:
Your account has been removed by Vimeo staff.
Reason: Vimeo is for personal, noncommercial use.
Regards,
Vimeo
I didn’t really think that my personal real estate video blog was “commercial use” of the service. I blog about local issues, real estate advice, and try and provoke discussion amongst the Sooke community about these issues. I’m not trying to “sell” anything. The fact that I work in a profession in which my success relies heavily on personal promotion and branding is irrelevant in this case. I create novel content to share with other users and readers of my blog, which is what Vimeo says it is all about.
Anyway, after arguing back and forth via e-mail with Dalas Verdugo, the community manager at Vimeo, he agreed to re-instate my account after deleting one of my videos, which was a walkthrough of #2-6110 Seabroom, a waterfront townhouse in Sooke. I conceded that this might be construed as commercial, but I doubt this was even considered. I bet that Dalas saw REALTOR® in my account and just hit the del key.
This sparked some discussion in the real estate blogosphere and twittersphere about the service. Fellow real estate video blogger Ian Watt was thankful for the heads-up and wanted to make sure his account wouldn’t be deleted. Ubertor bosses Stephen Jagger and Michael Stephenson were quick to request some communication with Vimeo as to clarification on what was and was not OK. Ubertor (my real estate website provider) has a Vimeo integration tool for its clients, allowing me to easily upload video tours, etc. to the service for display on my website. In fact, I would never have known about Vimeo if not for Ubertor. Dalas essentially told them that Vimeo was NOT interested in talking to them about it.
And it’s spreading. This morning I found JimDuncan had added me to his Twitter account, apparently having seen my tweets about Vimeo frustration. His tweet on the subject:
I can’t believe how short-sighted Vimeo is. There are plenty of other video sharing services on the Internet, and for an upstart to turn away an entire community of video bloggers like this is ludicrous.
Anyway – enough venting. I’ll continue to post on Vimeo for the time being, until I either get kicked off again, or I find a suitable alternative besides YouTube. If you have any trouble viewing my Vimeo posts, you can always check out my YouTube channel, as I mirror the videos there.
–Tim Ayres – Sooke Real Estate Professional
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That was quite a surprise. I’m trying out http://www.vidlisting.com now …. I really like Vimeo’s quality and player, but them shutting down the accounts so quickly sucks.
This is becoming more and more common – Vimeo removed almost 300 of my videos as well. Spike.com (formerly iFilm), Blip.TV and several others have done this in the past as well.
You have to realize that NONE of these companies (including YouTube) is making money! NONE. They’re all scrambling around trying to figure out how to monetize these sites, but none have come up with a model that actually works. There has even been talk of shutting YouTube down as it is a financial drain on Google.
Your best bet for not getting booted is use a site designed specifically FOR real estate, like WellcomeMat or Zipvo.
BUT, you also need to understand that THEY could disappear (as opposed to your videos) at any time. Logic says that these sites NEED to make money. Bandwidth COSTS money. Until they come up with a model that allows them to monetize these sites, they are ALL at risk of disappearing! Nothing is free in this world, and to assume these will be around offering everything for free to everyone is ridiculous.
Upload at your own risk. Everywhere.
THX M8 Yea Vimeo sucks !!! My Account was deleted with
this Reason :
Dear nico underdog: Your account has been removed by Vimeo staff. Reason: Game play is not allowed on vimeo. Regards,Vimeo
But there was a lot of selfproduced Music on Vimeo
My Mixes my Trax. But my Account is history
Youre right man Vimeo sucks !!!
never vimeo again. thx for this site !!!
I completely agree. We need to organize something against Vimeo and Dalas Verdugo. This guy has deleted my account TWICE now. The first time, he thought I had 2 accounts, when 1 belonged to my business partner. Just yesterday, he deleted my entire account of 30 videos. Some of them had upwards of 30k views! Wanna know why? Because I went in the Vimeo Forums and complained that it took 4 days to get a response from the HELP section. He said that by complaining, it was designed to harm Vimeo’s reputation, and therefore he completely deleted me off Vimeo without a warning.. for someone who’s trying to run a community, isn’t that kinda… FASCIST?
“Fascist governments permanently forbid and suppress all criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement.[10] Fascist movements oppose any ideology or political system that gives direct political power to people as individuals rather than as a collective through the state (liberalism, democracy, individualism); that is deemed detrimental to national identity and unity (class conflict, communism, internationalism, laissez-faire capitalism); that protects and enhances the power of weak people rather than promoting strong people (egalitarianism); that may oppose major changes to government and other institutions that it proposes (conservatism) and that undermine the military strength and military ambitions of the nation”
Yup. What can we do here guys?
For me the policies of Vimeo aren’t the issue, its the delivery of the video. I’ve pretty much come to the stage where if I see a Vimeo video on a web page I dont watch it, because the download always takes forever, or stops and starts all the time. Really the worst download delivery of all providers. And its not my net speed or connections, as I do speed tests and try many other video providers. I think that Vimeo has got big fast, not making any money, and can’t maintain their server network to delivery content properly.