Related videos: the real success of a site like this in the Vimeo Feature Requests Forum

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John Hope 4 months ago

I asked myself: what's the user experience aspect that helped the youtube success more?

I think i found it. And it's the only real key factor to make a site like this survive in the long term.

Let's start from beginning:
The web offers 2 surfing ways: searching and discovering.

Google is the best example of search engine.

Discover is not yet largely offered because it is a shift paradigm that will be offered in web3, using semantic storage.
In other words: intelligent tags processing.

And the difference i huge because if a site offers only the search + find paradigm, users will search, find, watch and close the page.

Instead youtube offers the little box in the right bottom area which is semantic: RELATED VIDEOS = DISCOVER!

This box doesn't show found items, but items that share some tag with the searched videos.
In most cases the user will be interested to watch the related videos because they have something to do with the one watched in that moment.
RESULT?: the user will not stop surfing the site, instead he will continue to discover new things he never minded to search.
The surfing deriving from one sincle search will be potentially unlimited!!!

Best regards
JH
Soxiam 4 months ago

the thing about the machine-generated related videos is that it's always either too broad or too narrow based on the meta data associated with the video provided by the user. we actually had the related videos module in v4 but we didn't like the results we were seeing. we never ruled out reintroducing this feature once we could implement a way to serve more relevant and interesting videos.

that said, the process of "discovery" on vimeo is much more organic experience. it's a people-driven discovery engine. by subscribing to like-minded users, you will discover wealth of videos your contacts (and in turn their contacts) uploaded, liked, etc.

additionally we also offer channels where people are curating videos around a theme or topic. and we will soon release groups feature which will expand on this idea of building a community around related videos, interests, and conversations.

thank you for your input.
John Hope 4 months ago

Yes, i agree, it's convincing.
Andres Borghi 4 months ago

Sorry, but I don't agree. For me doesn't matter if the videos shown in the related videos box aren't the best. Just by having something else reccomended with the same tags or similar words people can keep watching it. But the most important part is that it gives people reach to unknown videos. If I don't add my uploaded videos to a group, or put them in a link outside vimeo or they doesn't show at first in the results of a search, no one will get to my video. I mean the site is not helping my video to get seeing. Its all this little things that bother me, and are these things what made youtube popular. Vimeo is forcing me to make an extra work so my videos are seeing like adding it to gropus, to channels or having to add friends all the time. In youtube if you add the correct tag people gets there. Here no. Sorry if I get annoying but I feel the staff is making vimeo something for a little people and not for everyone.
John Hope 4 months ago

This is convncing too.
Andrew Pile 3 months ago

First off, we're not trying to be YouTube. Huge numbers of video views IS NOT what we're trying to accomplish. We want the videos you see to be contextual and relevant, not highly connected for connectivity's sake. That's why we built the subscriptions system and rely so heavily on likes-- what you see should be based on your network.
Soxiam 3 months ago

andrew's reply illustrated: newteevee.com/2008/06/23/avril-lavigne-vs-evolution/
Andres Borghi 3 months ago

I see. Ok, then, if that's the goal you wanna reach I can't say anything. But the thing is that, for example, I uploaded a video of mine which usually results attractive to people since it's an animation that looks vey good, and all that stuff. Normally in other sites it gets lots of views pretty fast but here, i uploaded it like a week ago and it's still dead. not even 1 people saw it. Of course i didn't do anything to help, but I just wanted to see what happened. AS you see, I'm not seeing it as: "hey why don't you want a million of sights per day like youtube!!?" but my video doesnt have not even 1 click. what I try to say is that people can't get to see what they are not being offered. By having related videos at one side people has direct choises to make, to choose which video to see. If the videos looks like crap doesn't matter since they won't see them. It's like: "hey, this site is only for people who knows what they want and has the will to search it. if you're not one of those, you'll have to evolve to that or get out of here". so, as a video uploader and filmmaker what I see is that the site doesnt help the uploaders by it's own, the user has to do all the work. I'm not saying it's a bad site, in fact it's pretty good and I like it but those things keep bothering me. but well, if that is what you want, then it's ok since it's your site which I guess is hard to create and mantain, and I still thank you for creating it.
Caroline Martin 3 months ago

That's true, you won't get page views without some "work," but I think you'll find that it's easier than you think. It seems that you are pretty new here, so the way vimeo works might be a little alien to you, coming from YouTube.

Vimeo thrives on it's community, as people have said before. Tags are helpful, but participation is key to not only making your videos known, but yourself as well. Users get to know each other through our site through comments, shared likes, shared projects, etc.

Sure, there's plenty of buried treasure on our site, and maybe no one will see it, ever. But that's probably because the user had no active interest in the community. It doesn't take video-peddling and spamming to become popular here. It takes genuine interest, original content, and some constructive participation.

Sorry if this isn't the way you're used to, but if you look around, I think you might find you'll like it here. People are kind, creative, and give helpful and insightful input into nearly every video they see. Start looking around, making friends, and see how it goes from there. :]

Welcome to the neighborhood.
Jip Eilbracht 4 months ago

I think the discover options of Vimeo are great, you can click on some random video - or a video a lot of people like. In this way you can really easy connect to new people who make great stuff, or channels.
I love them, for making such a good, well-thought out site.
Caroline Martin 3 months ago

We love you for using it! Thanks!
Underground Planet 3 months ago

I for one do not want "related" video's on my pages. There are far to many other options in place already (groups, channels, search etc) around for people to explore. I send people to my pages to look at my stuff and slapping a bunch of links to "related" video's would be a deal breaker for me.

And Andres, I can't argue with your experience on YouTube or the views you got there as I'm a YouTube hater, however, I can tell you that there are tons of video's on YouTube that have been up there for years that have very few plays. You mentioned you figured out adding tags to your video's got people to watch them, well, then you actually did have to do something to get those views other than just throw em up on the site and have people line up to look. You are ultimately responsible for your own traffic, no matter where you post your work.

- Ray
Caroline Martin 3 months ago

Thanks Ray, for putting that so well. :]
John Hope 3 months ago

Yes, it makes sense to me.
Andres Borghi 3 months ago

hmm.. ok. I guess I'll have to adapt to this new form. I'll investigate more. Thanks for your explanations.
Brett Moulton 3 months ago

Well said all!!!!.....you tube is gay!!!!
Soxiam 3 months ago

would you please mind not using that tone in our public forums? that's the kind of stuff you find on youtube.
Underground Planet 3 months ago

lol@Sox
laffer35 3 months ago

The reason you find more of that stuff on Youtube is that they have a lot more users.. if this site grows a lot, you'll find that here as well, all the time.

Anyway - I agree with the initial poster, related videos is a wonderful feature. The bottom line for me is this - people like getting their videos exposed and viewed. Related videos is a great way to do this.
I checked the information section on my most seen video on Youtube and over 50% of the one million+ views come from the related video feature.

It really is a good feature and I really wish you would reconsider. It doesn't harm the community aspect of the site one bit, I can't see any good reason for not implementing this, other than maybe a wish to be different from Youtube?
But in this case, being different is not a good thing.
Jason Dettmer 3 months ago

I think I have to disagree here. If this site is just going to be a clone of Youtube then what was the purpose of creating it? I say if you're looking for exposure, and exposure alone, then stick to Youtube. If you're looking for a community where you can share thoughts, ideas, collaborate and form relevant discussions around the work, then Vimeo is the choice bar none.

Youtube video posts are a joke. They're all laden with trash-talk and the site is completely saturated with work that none of the contributors actually created. I go there when I want to watch tv episodes or track down a clip from a movie or music video. I don't go there to discuss anything and I certainly don't go there for anything artistic.

Here I cater my inbox to exactly what I want to see, and every day there's something in there worth looking at that I can go comment on and potentially start a discussion about. The site is a -community-, not a stage. You have to give back what you take out of it. Want people to come see your work? Try finding people with similar work/interests and giving them a comment or two. Not only will they appreciate you taking time to check out their work, they'll usually come take a look at yours and leave you feedback. That's what a community is about, it's not just take take take. I'd rather get 5 quality pageviews from users actually interested in my video and willing to watch, discuss and critique it, as opposed to 5 thousand views from people who just happened to click it while passing through to the next thing.

Trying to have a discussion about a video on Youtube is like trying to have a serious discussion in the middle of a frat party. Vimeo feels like you're just hanging out with your friends in your living room. It's infinitely more inviting, and if it ever loses that feel it's over.

So I think being different is not only a good thing, it's critical.
John Hope 3 months ago

There will be anyway toons of differences: first of all the quality and the ability to download the original movie. The Groups, the Channels, the stronger community, thebetter look.

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