Alternative video streaming websites to YouTube

Dear beloved readers,

Here alternatives for you whenever Youtube goes down again:

I know that nothing disappoints more than expectation, but there were disappointments by both YouTubers and visitors alike when YouTube went down for close to 90 minutes on Tuesday 16 October 2018. 

Youtube is the second-most visited website, just behind Google search. With great followership and clearly a disruption in video streaming, few expected what happened to Youtube on the #YoutubeBlackAgain Tuesday, when a glitch caused Youtube to go offline for 90 minutes. The disappointment was indeed unimaginable.

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But the reality is this: technologies falter; being man-made, technologies can also be disrupted. It is for this reason that one should be armed with alternatives as insurance for unexpected disruptions. The need for alternatives applies to both Youtube channel owners and visitors.

Here are some video streaming platforms that can serve as alternatives to YouTube.

Disclaimer: Because, this is not a paid post, I will just list them without elaborating how each works or any distinction thereof. 

The two widely used alternative to Youtube are Dailymotion and Vimeo

1. Dailymotion:

Owned by Vivendi, Dailymotion is a worthy alternative to Youtube. It offers similar package as Youtube: it is free to both publishers and viewers, and allows limits on the length of videos that can be uploaded. One can say that Dailymotion business model is similar to Youtube's.

Just like Youtube, however, Dailymotion allows its publishers to run advertisements on their video, though not as frequently as does; ads are only shown once in a video, at its beginning.

While Youtube may have certain features than Dailymotion, the quality of Dailymotion's videos is topnotch and unmatched by Youtube's.

Fun fact about Dailymotion: Viewers can download video from Dailymotion free of any charge.

2.  Vimeo: 

Vimeo’s business model is quite different than YouTube. They make their money by selling video hosting service, so publishers and businesses can offer their users an ad free viewing experience.

In other words, it is not free to video publishers, unlike Youtube, but viewers do not need to be bothered with advertisements placed by Google. However, publishers may choose to recoup the cost of hosting their videos on Vimeo by placing their own ads: it allows video publishers to mention sponsors in their videos, add links in video description and ask users to support your channel on platforms like Patreon.

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Vimeo also offers “Vimeo on Demand”. It is a platform that their publishers can sell videos directly to viewers. But to do this, a publisher will need at least a Vimeo Pro account to join the program. It functions just like Netflix.

Fun fact about Vimeo: Vimeo has a Groups feature where users can create and participate in groups, just as we have Facebook group feature. In fact, it functions in a similar way as Facebook group where users can limit group content visible only to its members.