Recently I have been investigating which video-sharing site would be best for us to use for our News Network to operate on. In the brief we were given, both Youtube and Vimeo were the two best suggested sites to use. I am actually unfamiliar with using Vimeo to produce and share videos, and so I will have to investigate just how customisable our profile would be in there.
I do however have many years using Youtube to share videos, as my first Youtube channel and videos were first uploaded sometime between 2006-2008. Youtube has come a long way over the years and the customisation of the users profile and channel, as well as the youtube analytics system which allows the user to see exactly which gender, age-group and location on the planet a certain video is most popular with. This would of course be a very useful tool when it comes to creating our news network, as we will be able to see if we are attracting our target audience with our content.
In terms of customisation, Youtube allows the user to create a "channel" or profile which hosts all their videos. They are given their own URL (www.youtube.com/USERNAME) which can of course be shared online and spread easily. Other users of the site can also subscribe to youtube channels to ensure that they receive updates of the channels activity and get notifications whenever the user uploads a new video or broadcasts a new message.
Each channel can be given a customised banner (which we will probably create using Adobe Photoshop if we choose to use Youtube as our network site) which helps the channel stand out from the others. Users are also able to add in-depth descriptions to their uploaded videos, which are found underneath the videos.
Each video also contains a comments section where visitors can discuss and critique the videos which have been uploaded. This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessings are that genuine critique is available at any point from real life people with opinions. We can improve based on these opinions and hopefully learn to cater to a target audience via their suggestions.
The downside to this is that our channel could quickly become the victim of trolling by some users, which makes channels look quite messy and unprofessional. Obviously we don't want to resort to censoring users comments, as people have genuine opinions and suggestions to help better the network.
In conclusion, I think I should investigate Vimeo further before we make our decision.
Something to think about is also the amount of traffic that Vimeo and Youtube generate. I used a website called TrafficEstimate.com to find out how many visitors each site receives monthly.
Vimeo- 9341200
Youtube- 1883529000
The numbers speak for themselves really. Youtube is a much more popular website, which is something we should also consider when making our decision.
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