Vimeo adds mobile video viewing, embeds coming soon
Good news for users of Vimeo, the online video sharing site whose features and community quite frankly blow YouTube out of the water: they’ve just added great new mobile viewing features.
If you’ve paid up for a Vimeo Plus account ($60 for a year, or $10/month), you can now log in to the mobile version of the site (at vimeo.com/m) on your iPhone, Android device, or Palm Pre, and hit the “Generate Mobile Videos” button. All your existing videos will be converted into a new mobile-friendly format that looks fabulous on a tiny screen.
Once you’ve switched on this feature, it will automatically apply to all video files you upload in future.
There’s one minor gotcha: mobile videos can’t be longer than 30 minutes. That’s probably going to affect a minority of users but it’s worth remembering next time you’re making an edit.
Right now, there’s no support for embedding these new mobile-friendly versions elsewhere, but judging by some of the posts in the official support thread there is plenty of demand for this feature, and comments from Vimeo staffers there suggest that it might be on the way. Or as they put it: “We don’t have this feature yet, but stay tuned.” Followed just a few hours ago by: “We’re still working on it. Don’t worry, we’ll make it awesome.”
(Still from Multi-frame Madness: Winter Shots by Travis Tindell.)
