Vimeo is officially launching a new default HTML 5 player that’s 50 per cent faster than the the flash module that came before. In fact, you may have already been using it for months as the service has been slowly rolling it out to users. Sneaky, sneaky! Pretty much the only way you’ll use the oldness is on Facebook soon. Did you notice that your videos were loading faster when you press play?
Additionally, Vimeo has improved its nascent On Demand platform, which allows content creators to charge money for their videos. Now, once you set up a payment account, you’ll be able to purchase a video directly from the player, even if it’s been embedded somewhere else on the web.
Given how widely some of Vimeo’s innovative and independently produced content gets distributed, this could potentially earn content creators a bundle of money. Perhaps more importantly, it helps keep pre-roll advertising off of Vimeo, which the company told me would never arrive. Really? “Hell no,” I’m told.
The new player has lots of little goodies built-in that could help grow Vimeo’s platform beyond its core users: From improved sharing tools to wider compatibility. On the back end, Vimeo is working to improve its encoding pipelines, which if you might have noticed if you’re a creator that uploads videos. Remember how long it used to take?
We love Vimeo — it’s the home for video that people actually put their hearts into. A better platform that brings new eyeballs to the actually good stuff online is an undeniably good thing.