wync

Vimeo: Taking Video from Commodity to Community

Hung out with my good buddy last weekend. Jon is one of those rare people with whom I have an endless number of things to talk about. Which is fortunate, because he talks a lot. :) Jon has a really cool job running Business Development and Marketing at CollegeHumor. Those who know him know that there is no better person in the world for that job.

One cool thing he showed me was Vimeo. The best way to describe it is a video version of Flickr. Vimeo really gets how take a relative commodity, streaming video, and build a great community around it. The site doesn't focus on stolen clips, but instead on interesting original user-generated content. The feel of the site is much warmer, more creative and cooler than the bigger players. To immediately see how different it is from a site like YouTube, check the comments on posted videos. YouTube comments seem to almost always be negative, poorly written and rude. Vimeo's comments are positive, witty and helpful.* It is just a much better vibe and cooler product. The guys at Connected Ventures have, once again, done a great job.

In the meantime, here are two Vimeo clips of his trip that Jon uploaded:

Matt tours the Stanford d.school on Vimeo

Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, at night, just after it rained. on Vimeo

* Hey Jon, you should upload your "Stuck in the Elevator" clip to YouTube so we can do a comparison of the types of comments generated by the two sites.

Business by Design vs. Business as Usual

Last week Diego Rodriguez of Metacool/IDEO dropped by the d.school to give a presentation. It was typically engrossing and the discussion focused on whether companies are designed around innovation (Business by Design) or optimization (Business as Usual).

We all love innovative firms, but some businesses function much better in the "Business as Usual" mode. Diego pointed out that he would prefer that his pilot not get overly creative about his approach to JFK. Heart Surgeons and Firemen face similar constraints. Alternatively, some firms live or die based on their ability to continually innovate. Many car and electronics makers would fit in this category. A firm that has been able to do both? Apple is a rare example.

For more on this topic, check out Bob Sutton's excellent podcast on this topic. We're hopefully going to be featuring both Bob and Diego soon on this topic for iinnovate.