If you immediately thought “YouTube“, you are obviously on the pulse of the Internet: YouTube easily wins as the biggest and most popular video site, but it’s not without its flaws. For one thing, their 10-minute-maximum upload limit is the bane of the life of all artists who like creating videos that last 11 minutes and beyond.
By all means, upload your finely crafted motion pictures to YouTube, but before you marry your creative aspirations to a single site, have a look at two of its competitors that are snapping at its heels, as well.
Vimeo – YouTube made it easy to quickly share videos with your friends, often directly from your mobile phone or editing software, but if you’re in the business of creating art, Vimeo is well worth a closer look. With a much less cluttered interface, it’s obvious that Vimeo was designed by filmmakers. You won’t find any clips from the football world club or music videos here: It’s all about original content, carefully crafted by creative creatures all over the world. The ability to add a custom thumbnail is also very welcome.
Blip TV – If your aspirations are beyond a single movie and you’re instead aiming to create a whole series of content, look into Blip. Its interface makes it easy to create your own TV series online, and helps your users by enabling them to skip to the next episode, and find out more about the series.
There are about a dozen big video sharing sites out there, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Think about what you’re trying to achieve with your video: For full viral potential, YouTube is hard to beat. To distribute your own TV series, look to Blip – and for short films, consider Vimeo. At least until you hear back from Disney about that distribution deal.