Viddme: anonymous video sharing platform
YouTube is the uncrowned king of video sites on the Internet. While that is the case, criticism has become louder, most recently in regards to the integration of Google's social networking service Google Plus as the sole commenting option on the platform.
One of the main points of criticism is that one cannot remain anonymous when uploading videos to YouTube. That's one of the reasons why Viddme has been created.
The service strives to introduce anonymous video sharing to the Internet, to become what Imgur is for images or 4Chan for discussions.
The homepage of the service resembles that of Imgur. Not visually, but functionality-wise. You get a selection of popular videos on it, options to upload or record videos, or paste video or gif links, or check out the services Android or Iphone apps.
As far as supported upload formats go: Viddme supports popular formats like avi or mp4, but lacks support for others such as flv.
I could not find any information on upload limits on the site itself. All of the videos linked on the service's frontpage have a playing time of less than 10 minutes.
Strong arguments speak for Viddme on the other hand. First, it does not have the same rigorous restrictions that YouTube has. You can upload any type of content, including adult, as long as it is legal (this includes copyright of course).
In addition to that, since it is anonymous, it does not require you to create an account. You can start to upload a video right away on the site without account creation.
What this means as well is that videos do not get linked to a specific account. On YouTube, if you want a video not associated with your Google account, you need to create a new Google account to do so.
There is also no advertisement yet on the site, but that is to be expected. Not only because of the lax content restrictions, but also because of it being a new service. It is likely that some form of monetization will come to the service eventually.
The video player uses HTML5 by default, and while I could not play any video in Google Chrome at the time of testing, I had no such issues using Firefox. [Update: seems to be a problem with the most recent Chrome Dev build, not Chrome in particular]
The apps apparently let you use the same functionality. Upload an existing video or one that you record to the service, all without account creation or other annoyances.
You get a short url in the end that you can share with others. In addition to that, you can also copy code to embed the videos directly on websites.
Verdict
Viddme has received some traction lately, but it is too early to say if the service will stick around, or if it will be closed down eventually.
This depends on a lot of factors, including the company's monetization strategy, if it becomes the favorite video hosting service for a popular site such as Reddit or 4Chan, and if the service can keep up with accelerated growth if it is happening.
For now, I'd create backups of videos that I upload to it, just in case.
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What anonymous video hosters are not using Google Tools?
Not anonymous anymore.. now you need to login
“YouTube is the uncrowned king of video sites on the Internet. While that is the case, criticism has become louder…”
“…most recently in regards to the integration of Google’s social networking service Google Plus as the sole commenting option on the platform.”
Comparing it to Youtube at any point was not so good idea btw. you can’t make comments at all on Viddme,they are just trimmed down version of Imgur really :)
If/When the service gets popular, it’ll have policies just as draconian or worse than YouTube’s, it’s just something that happens to every service that gets big.
My bet is the choice was made due to copyrights sharks because it’s gonna be hard for them to find out if there are some illegal activities going on.
Let’s say it,you can find full movies uploaded on Youtube can’t you?No one will shut yt down for that but newbies like Viddme might be afraid of sharks I understand.
Nice,but there is not search box anywhere or is there? I know that this is meant for sharing but if they targeting youtube audience then they have to get me one :)
I agree, I don’t see a search either. Without any way to search for content, count me out.
It is probably by choice.