Vimeo is being spun off into a standalone public company as the video streaming site sees rapid growth brought on by the pandemic. Since shortly after its founding, Vimeo has been owned by IAC, the enormous tech and media holding company behind Angie’s List, Ask, Dotdash (formerly About.com), and, until recently, the dating app juggernaut Match Group.
IAC expects to complete the spinoff of Vimeo in the second quarter of 2021. “It’s time for Vimeo to spread its wings and become a great independent public company,” Joey Levin, IAC CEO, said in a press release. The spinoff is supposed to help Vimeo raise money to further invest in product and sales capabilities.
Vimeo, founded in 2004, has long offered what is essentially a more professional alternative to YouTube. The site allows paying members to customize the video player surrounding their films, put password protection on videos, create custom sites, integrate with Google Analytics, and have multiple team members manage an account, among other features more likely to be needed by teams and professionals than individuals. Creators can also offer rentals and purchases of their films through Vimeo.
The site doesn’t focus on video discovery and vitality to the extent that YouTube has, and its free plan comes with significant limitations, so it’s never achieved quite the same scale as its most prominent competitor.
Vimeo says it now has 200 million users (though it doesn’t clarify if that number is in total, per month, or something else) and has grown rapidly throughout 2020. “In the last 7 months we’ve welcomed over 30 million new members, seen over 60 million new videos created and uploaded, and powered millions of live events that went digital for the first time — more than the prior 3 years combined,” Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud wrote last month.
In November, Vimeo raised $150 million, valuing the company at $2.75 billion, according to CNBC. Sud said the funding would help Vimeo build new tools for teams and enterprise users, develop richer live event features, and add integrations with more third-party platforms, alongside the creation of other new tools.
“We’re ready for this next chapter and focused on making video far easier and more effective than ever before,” Sud said in today’s press release.
from WordPress https://ift.tt/2KPeunC
via IFTTT
0 Comments