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VIMEO bans all commercial and real estate videos

Vimeo, one of the better video sites on the net, is now banning all commercial videos, including real estate videos.

I received a lengthy, detailed explanation via email:

Dear NashuaVideoTours:

Your account has been removed by Vimeo staff.

Reason: Vimeo is for personal, noncommercial use.

Regards,
Vimeo

Posted by Fred Light - Real Estate Video Tours for MA and NH on 07/07/2008 07:58 PM

Comments (26)

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26 Comments on VIMEO bans all commercial and real estate videos

JUL

2008

Wow, I just joined this weekend. That was quick.

Fred,

I guess I can look forward to my cancellation email also, since I only use it for video tours also.

JUL

2008

So which ones do you recommend with that info. I have seen you use the Welcomemat one. Any others?

Personally, I host all of my own videos on my own server. I'm not at all convinced that many of these other sites will 1) begin to ban commercial type videos, etc. or 2) go out of business as they were unable to figure out how to monetize the site.

I upload to web based sites for one reason and ONLY one reason - because many of them get indexed well and quickly by Google. Many people search for real estate starting with search engines, and these videos pop up on page one within hours. If a video site does NOT get indexed by search engines, I won't waste my time - I see no value whatsoever.

Many sites have (or probably will) start cleaning out their inventory and banning blatant commercial advertising. SpikeTV (formerly iFilm), Blip.TV, Vimeo and several others have done it in the past. Divx Stage 6 recently shut down as well.

There are several real estate video specific sites... WellcomeMat.com, ZipVo.com, and a couple of others I don't really pay much attention to.

I just received an email from DiamondHomeVideos.com yesterday... it seems they are also offering to host videos on their site as well. It does seem that they will be charging to do so, but I don't know how much. Again, from my perspective 1) I don't want MY videos branded with DiamondHomeVideos logo, 2) Their interface I don't find particularly attractive- its actually quite ugly, 3) the videos are jittery and don't play well. I uploaded one yesterday and was not happy with it at all, but can't figure out how to remove it.

So again... they're charging, but I won't be paying as I see no value - to me or my customers. And that's the conundrum with real estate video. You HAVE to be able to charge in order to support the bandwidth necessary to run these site. However, if you DO charge, you need to offer something of value to the customer.

Right now I don't see much of any of that. I don't want to upload my videos and be dependent on some other company, which may changed their policies (with no notice whatsoever, except for deleting ALL of your videos and THEN informing you!) or which could just go out of business due to lack of funding or income sources.) Everybody is scrambling around right now trying to figure out how to make this work AND make money, and so far, it's not been terribly successful. I've read reports even of Google possibly killing YouTube for the same reason - they're not making any money and losing a LOT.

So stay tuned... I'm sure it will get even more interesting....

Fred, That has to be one of the most imformative comments ever. I don't think a lot of the end used understand all of the ramifications completely.

I have used Mixpo.com for a couple of months so far and I love it. I've tried Wellcomemat and Vimeo but they don't have the same quality and user friendly interface as Mixpo does. It's worth a try. Mixpo charges 39.00 a month, but it has a lot of information you can send to your clients.

John: How does one get hooked up on Mixpo? I sent Active Rain money as they requested, but can't seem to get any responses on how to begin using it.

Fred,

Contact Brad Andersohn with AR, he helped me get Mixpo going after I sent the money in.

JUL

2008

Fred, I would love to see what you think of Mixpo once you are on.

Steve: The quality looks good, however it seems they're not [yet] Mac compatible... and I don't do Windows (never have, and certainly don't want to start now!)

So... will wait until they go over to the dark side and let us in...

Fred, I was going to join, but I guess I'll look around for another venue... thanks for sharing. ;-)

JUL

2008

I got that email too! And I was disappointed because I was looking forward to use it for my video tours, but I guess it's back to YouTube!

Fred, Well they finally caught up to me! I recieved the cancellation email tonight also.

There were over 100 new video-sharing sites that were launched just last year alone. It can be confusing which ones to use.

YouTube is still among the worst sites in terms of video quality and audio stream, but they are undoubtedly the most popular.

There is a site called Veoh that is considered to have the best quality video on several levels. They have the best clarity and resolution utilizing double-pass flash encoding and a high bit-rate for sound.

They also have no limit on file upload size and are one of the few sites that allow you to utilize custom thumbnails. Studies have shown that an enticing thumbnail can increase your viewership by 10 fold.

It's worth a look. I don't work for Veoh, but our video production company does a lot of uploads and they are the best at this point.

Mark Selmi

Avanti Films

AUG

2008

I had some of my videos banned by blip.tv. They told me the same thing. They did not ban my account however. It seems every time I start liking a site (Vimeo) the rules change.

SEP

2008

I was unaware that Vimeo pulled the plug on real estate videos. Thanks for posting!

If you sign up for Veoh Pro which is Free you can use it to load your video to Veoh, Youtube, Google and Myspace all with a single upload....great service. TubeMogul does the same thing but has distribution limits beyond which TubeMogul becomes very expensive...so for now Veoh is choice.

Mark Passserby, POVvideotours.com

SEP

2008

I think bandwidth may be the issue. YouTube now streams high quality video, so the others will have to be able to stream really high quality video also! This means their operating costs increase.

The video landscape is quickly changing on the internet: I have a suspicion that video-for-profit (real estate videos) will be taken off by many websites. Also these sites don't want to be free-streaming resources for for-profit-video.

Robert

SEP

2008

Normally, we've been on Fred's list of upload sites before and since it is relevant to the discussion, I'll make a shameless plug.

We have an free upload site with large video that doesnt pause or jitter. If you film in a widescreen 16x9 format, the converted video stays in 16x9 format. We've done a lot of investment in simplifying the upload process over the past 6 months in response to user feedback and completely redesigned our player page. You can configure the video to play right in the widget or redirect viewers back to your own website to watch the video depending on what is best for you. Try it at http://upload.vidlisting.com.

If you haven't tried us recently, come back and give us a try. We are not a simple Youtube clone and we've added a bunch of widget capabilities that other video sites simply dont have. Some examples:

- prospective buyers can communicate with you right through the video widget. The first contact is with a form to protect you from spam but follow-on conversations are free text and occur in a twitter like real time messaging interface.

- You can add PDF documents, Youtube videos, or Real Estate Shows to your video widget within seconds as supplemental content. Whats this do? Visitors can watch the property video plus look at a PDF of the plat, also watch a community video from Youtube, and your real estate shows all using the same video widget without you having to re-upload the other content again and again. (example of both additional content and communcations on a property video widget)

- You can cut and paste a transcript for the video that is both human-readable and indexed by Google. (example)

Video uploaded at vidlisting is converted immediately without the day long wait (or more) on some real estate video sites. The converted video is also made available on a number of syndicated listing sites throughout the world (not other video upload sites) based on prenegotiated agreements that we have with those sites. We also have our own geolocated local pages (like this one from charlottesville, VA) where your video is posted. That means that our videos on average get far more views and leads than most video upload sites...and those views tend to be from prospective buyers rather than other videographers and realtors.

For those that want to self-host videos, we also have a widget (and API for developers) that will convert video in any or all of 6 online formats (swf, flv, iphone ready MP4, mov, wmv, 3GP) and FTP the converted file(s) back to your own server so you can do what you want with the final video.

Tony

For those that are posting about the advantages of Veoh, it may not be the best choice for attracting international buyers. Here is the message that most of our non-US customers receive:

veoh link

The free sites are great for SEO, like mentioned above. I am a big fan of using professional video hosting services for a number of reasons. It's important to have a service with a powerful technical backbone for delivering video instantly. In this manner the videos load faster and don't stutter as much if at all. For those of you wanting to DIY, vidlisting sounds pretty good - and you don't have to worry about getting banned! Do you guys at vidlisitng use a CDN or run your own servers for video streaming?

For those of you producing video tours for agents and inserting the video link directly into the listing's virtual tour: I'd recommend a system like the one we use - brightcove. Weather.com, Discovery Networks, Showtime, etc. all use them to deliver video over the internet in high resolution and to individuals with not-so-great internet connections. Brightcove is a true Content Delivery Network (CDN). So here's my plug:

Dave

DC Video Tour

Dave: We have our own servers for streaming and a different set of them for conversion. Our forsalebylocals platform is actually "content agnostic" and can handle management and geolocation of not just videos but also PDFs, Office Docs, etc plus externally hosted content like Youtube and Real Estate Shows.

If the goal is to help others sell properties, making the right content easily discoverable by prospective buyers is far more important to us than creating a system geared primarily to videographers.

OCT

2008

Thanks for the heads up on Vimeo. Guess I can understand it, though I always add in video and photos of the area to attract more interest. Don't think I have uploaded to them.

NOV

2009

for those that are still looking for alternatives - especially for business or commercial use, i'd recommend Jing. it's a tool that you can use to record both onscreen demos and upload videos from your webcam. you have to have the pro version for the webcam upload feature though. Jing pro currently runs $14.95/year - pretty low cost, i think.

hope that helps,

kisha

www.sagesmallbiz.com

DEC

2009

You can add Viddler to this list:

Thank you for looking at Viddler for your video hosting needs.

We have seen your usage increase over last month and due to commercial/marketing nature of content would like to seriously suggest taking a look at our business services programs. It's a high quality service that includes HD, Analytics, iTunes and Control over Advertising.

You can find out more about the benefits of Viddler Business Services at http://b2b.viddler.com.

If you get back today via email can cut you enterprise level deal starting at $10/month minimum instead of $100/month minimum.

Unfortunately we will to close your account in 24 hours if we don't hear back due to misuse of a personal account.

Best,

Rob

---Who am I---
robert sandie
co-founder.president - viddler.com

JAN

2010

I know that thedirectorysuite.com are looking for commercial videos dealing with all sorts of businesses like restaurants, hotels, real estate, in fact any business or commerical video at all. I believe that their even doing a deal at the moment where you can ask to upload a video, have your email address, business address and a google map for free. I think all you have to do is contact them at info@thedirectorysuite.com.

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Fred Light - Real Estate Video Tours for MA and NH

Nashua, NH

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