Most times, I talk about YouTube in a way that goes something like, “Yeah, it’s big, but it’s ugly. I like Vimeo better.” I think I might be wrong about that. It perhaps doesn’t get enough credit for the way it looks.
When you collapse all the bits and pieces on YouTube, it’s actually a pretty decent-looking, quiet interface.
Underscores for me the importance of text, color, spacing, and lines. That’s ALL this interface is, aside from four buttons and 11 graphic elements.
2 Comments
It just works. Well.
That’s the key to YouTube’s complete dominance. It showed up and just worked.
Well, it was early enough to jump into a market where simply functioning was a key differentiator.
Vimeo is quite beautiful, though. But it lacks the social proof that YouTube conveys. When you see a video on YouTube you have a sense that wow, people are watching this shit. Vimeo is a very personal experience. A quiet moment with yourself and your web video.
I don’t think people consider enough the power of the interface, generally.
Thoughts on that?
I mean, you can clearly get a sense for what YouTube is trying to do, and what Vimeo is trying to do, just by looking at what goes where. You have to scroll for stats in Vimeo. In YouTube, stats are right there under the moving bit. There’s even a whole tab for statistics and data, which is remarkable for a site that reaches such an enormous, diverse audience.