Recently, the IAC-owned video service Vimeo, acquired Cameo, a video making app that launched last fall. Cameo is a video recording iOS app that features simple video editing tools, such as video filter, adding title cards and even adding video footage from different cameras. Within its third month on the market, Cameo was awarded Apple’s Editors choice and iTunes Best of 2013 awards in the video category.
“Vimeo is committed to empowering all creators, and the ubiquity of HD camera phones is driving the largest wave of video creation ever seen,” said Kerry Trainor, CEO Vimeo. “What we love about Cameo is that it gives even novice video-makers the power to create beautiful, well-crafted videos.”
Cameo is different from other short form video apps such as Instagram and Vine, as it offers a two-minute maximum video sequence length. And individual clips can only be six seconds long, but it enables users to stitch clips together into a short movie. Plus once you’ve finished you can add music, change the order of clips and invite friends to contribute their own footage. Which is great for when you missed that great clip when you had courtside seats to the Lakers’ game because their 7-foot backup center wouldn’t sit down the entire game.
But how does Cameo, make Vimeo stand out from the likes of YouTube? Well, through the use of cameo fans and filmmakers will be able to shoot, edit and upload videos straight to their Vimeo account. This is great for those videos that are made on the move, for example: team away games and athletes on tour.
Vimeo however, has a long standing reputation of being the more polished version on video sharing platforms. It’s filled with quality content and serious filmmakers who dominate the community giving constructive feedback on videos. Something you may not come across on YouTube. The actual site of Vimeo has a strong emphasis on the actual video by removing all distractions from around the video player and no advertisements throughout videos. Something all sports fans can be thankful for.
Although YouTube could be considered on the lower end of video quality, it has made big strides to promote quality videos. Plus the search power and analytics that YouTube provide are second to none. And of course, the audience size of YouTube is unrivalled.
The sports market is something both platforms are struggling to win over. With Vimeo there are aesthetically pleasing surf and skate videos or sport documentaries, but not much more in terms of consistent sports content. And it’s definitely tough to compete against YouTube’s highlight clips and streaming Google Hangouts with players. Both platforms have positives for the sports market, but with Cameo joining the Vimeo team, this could mean an increase of simple, fast, fan generated content. A crucial step in the right direction towards becoming a more established sports video source.
But with Vimeo making strides in other directions such as making significant upgrades to its HTML5 video player, investing $10 million for exclusive online distribution rights for indie films, and rolling out a massive update to its Vimeo On Demand (VOD) platform, it could be on its way to taking the sports video sharing crown.