

Vidyard’s (YC S11) video service just one-upped every competitor - michaelrlitt
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/11/17/vidyards-awesome-video-service-just-one-upped-every-competitor/

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gkoberger
I'm all for "good artists copy; great artists steal", however Vidyard has
taken it a bit too far: their player is a complete rip off of Vimeo.

<http://cl.ly/3J1x213B1z1K3t1M3T2Q>

I know there's more going on behind the scenes with Vidyard, however I hate
that the Vidyard player gets credit for being "beautifully done" when Vimeo's
top notch designers did all the work.

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namank
If it works, it works.

Plus the look is not what they are selling, Vidyard's value is in their
analytics and thats why they are topping the news pipeline and thats why I
doubt they (or their customers) care about being so close to Vimeo.

But I do have to question what the article's author meant by 'beautiful'.
Maybe that Vidyard's videos (and hence their player) supports way higher
resolution than any of these other free sites. That makes sense to me, look at
their sample video - its one of the best demo videos I've ever seen.

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mdasen
I see that Vidyard has also increased their pricing.

Three months back, Vidyard was offering unlimited videos on their Venti plan
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2913255>). Today, they're only offering
100 videos and the price has gone up from $50/mo to $249/mo. If this is a tool
mostly to be used for short videos, it seems a tad on the expensive side now.
If one assumes a file size of 100MB and 100 videos, that's only 10GB costing a
couple dollars in storage each month. Even the 101GB of transfer is only
around $15.

I understand how it would be difficult to offer unlimited video hosting (as I
brought up three months ago). As a curiosity (if someone from the team is
here), what changed?

Assuming the same 100MB file size, that means that Vimeo Pro is offering about
2TB of transfer per month and 50GB of storage (enough for 500 videos) for
under $20/mo. In case you're wondering about the math: Vimeo offers 250,000
plays per year which comes out to over 20,000 per month and with 100MB per
play you get 2TB in transfer per month. Are you finding that the average video
is larger than 100MB? Of course, if the file size is larger, the extra
bandwidth used would mean Vidyard would be offering fewer viewings of it. If
the video is 500MB, the 101GB of transfer Vidyard offers would only allow 202
people to watch it in that month while Vimeo Pro would allow 20,000 people to
watch without overage charges - plus, even at the 500MB file size, the 50GB of
storage would still offer space for 100 videos like Vidyard.

If I sound critical, I'm sorry. If Vidyard isn't about storing and serving
videos as much as it is about real-time analytics and integration with
services like YouTube, that's just what I need to hear. I'm genuinely curious.

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michaelrlitt
It's great perspective. To be completely honest - 101GB is loose. Since we
leverage RTMP streaming and most viewers don't watch the entire video, we end
up serving less bandwidth.

We're pretty focused on avoiding commoditization by bandwidth. As you
mentioned, we're about integrations, analytics and call to action -
significant value adds that vanilla hosting platforms don't and won't provide.

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il
Congrats guys. Love the product. Using a Vidyard video on our landing pages
has significantly increased conversions.

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michaelrlitt
Glad to hear - reach out anytime if you have questions!

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80hours
Very professional website, this service is clearly needed.

BUT I feel youtube could kill them instantly by adding an "ad free"/"no click
thru" plan. Maybe they will do that as part of the Google Apps suite?

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devongall
Definitely something we've considered - they tried doing something similar
awhile back, but ended up removing the service pretty quickly.

It just doesn't fit Google's typical monetization through advertisements.

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mminer
Well deserved, the product is great and the team kicks ass.

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dools
I'm always a little surprised when these articles don't mention wistia.com as
a Vidyard predecessor and competitor. I guess Chris was right when he said
it's really hard to get people to notice you[1]!

[1] <http://savagethoughts.com/post/1591677111/making-ideas-work>

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evolution
Really needed service. This can be extended to use video as landing page where
video will say all and also include call to action.

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devongall
Definitely! We've actually got sharing pages built in already for people just
wanting to share a video along with a call to action or other content.

We've also done some pretty cool things with Unbounce landing pages - there's
an article on the video landing page experience here:
[http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/case-
study-...](http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/case-study-using-
video-to-lift-landing-page-conversion-rate-by-100/)

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fraserharris
Congratulations Mike, Ed, & Devon! Great product & all-star investors!

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karamdeep
Unbelievable work guys...I can´t wait to see what´s coming next!

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jakobe
On my Macbook, no Flash installed, the video plays nicely (via HTML5 I
suppose), until I hit pause. The the play button stops working.

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robee
You guys are killing it! Making Waterloo proud.

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CosmicShadow
Waterloo and Velocity strikes again, these guys are going to be the next big
thing! Congrats!

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Vaismania
Congrats guys!

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aboyeji
so cool!

