The 6 Best Video Platforms Beyond Youtube!

Video platforms have become in recent years one of the most recurring digital services on the Internet. It is logical, considering that they can be the medium and the perfect opportunity for many professionals who are dedicated to the creation of content, audiovisual development, music, teaching, advertising and a long etcetera that basically covers, to anyone who wants to make themselves known or share the content of interest through the internet.

These video platforms can be a perfect showcase for you. And, obviously, they will be to a greater or lesser extent depending on what you want to make known, but in one way or another, it can serve as a “window” to the world around you.

Now, I want to ask you a question: What is the biggest window you can think of if you think about audiovisual content on the internet? If you are thinking about YouTube … Bingo!

These video platforms have more than 1.5 billion users worldwide. And it is logical because it has local versions of its same site in 88 countries and 76 different languages.

But not only that! It is not a social network that is popular, exclusively, among young people and adults. The truth is that people of any age range consume YouTube content daily.

To be more exact, one billion hours a day are consumed on YouTube by all of us, which makes it an undisputed leader among multimedia platforms. As data, the closest to YouTube is Netflix (which will also sound a little …).

In addition to this, something that can make us better understand how relevant YouTube is is the fact that in the ranking of 500 most visited websites (built by Alexa) there is only Google above YouTube.

YouTube as a search engine

And, to find some information that we would normally search on Google, there are times when we search directly on YouTube, using it as a search engine. For example, if we want to know how a device works, instead of looking for information about it, we can look for demonstrations of use. And what better way if you can’t prove it yourself, than seeing how it is tested by other people and in real cases, through a video, right?

It is not the only internet video platform option

However, even though YouTube is as big and spectacular as we are saying, is it the only video platform on the internet? Not much less. There are many other video platforms that are also useful, even sometimes, they can be more according to what you want to use them for. Are you ready to meet them? Go for it!

1. Vimeo

What characterizes Vimeo?

The number of users. With more than 100 million unique visitors per month, Vimeo is one of the favourite platforms for image and sound professionals.

• The quality of the videos. For this platform, content quality will always be the most important. This is why we can find any kind of creative content.
• There is no advertising. How are you reading it! You will not see those ads that on many occasions are so annoying to see on YouTube. This does not mean, much less, that there are no other forms of monetization.
• More advanced options than on YouTube. We can upload heavier videos and customize them in many different ways. Like for example, being able to customize the play button. Of course this and many other options, we can get them through a payment plan.
• Private videos We have the option that our private videos cannot be shared, shared only with certain users or even protected by a password that will be required when playing the video.
• Control over our videos. We decide if we want our videos to be downloaded or can only be disseminated.
• Free features. If we want to use it for free, we will have other features available, such as 500mb per week and a total of 5gb.

2. Wistia

What characterizes Wistia?

• 100% customization. There are many options that Wistia gives us to customize the player of our videos to our liking.

1. Customize the drivers.
2. Insert social media buttons.
3. Add a call to action with the text you want, an image or an Html code.
4. Customize the preview colour by adding your corporate.
5. Change the thumbnail to a specific image.

• Analyze your statistics. Know the number of users who watch your videos, what minutes are the most-watched, when they usually stop and many more interesting facts to not miss anything about the behaviours of the users who watch your videos.
• Help the SEO of your videos. It is something that Wistia cares about, as it improves the indexing of your video in 3 very easy steps to carry out with which you can tell the robots.txt the location of your videos.
• Privacy. Share your videos privately giving you the option to create different permissions depending on who can access your content.
• Payment or free plan. It can be a bit more expensive than the rest (€ 87 / month), but you can try it before for free by creating a limit of 3 videos. Worth!

3. Daily motion

What characterizes Daily Motion?

• What is it about. Daily Motion is a joint work with BuzzFeed, Showtime and Mashable, which means that, mainly, on this platform, we can find different clips of films and short films.
• The number of users. 300 million users worldwide who watch 3.5 billion videos every month.
• Video quality This platform supports 4k videos. The only downside is that these can only last 60 minutes or weigh 2GB at most.
• Content protection It has a software called Audible Magic with which they obtain high copyright protection.
• Monetization By connecting your website with Dailymotion and sharing videos that carry embedded advertising, you can receive income for each visualization they make.

4. Twitch

What characterizes Twitch?

• It is not just for video games. What started as a videogame streaming service, has begun to expand to offer a wide variety of live broadcasts, with categories such as:

1. Creative.
2. Kitchen.
3. Podcasts
4. Art and music.
5. And much more!

• Save your videos This platform is characterized mainly by live videos, but this is not the only option. All the videos you broadcast live, you can save them in your profile so they can be viewed at any time, which in the end creates your own content channel.
• A closer window. Other features of Twitch is that, normally, in addition to watching the video that is being transmitted, we can see the person at the same time, as they usually use a camera that is focusing them all the time. This makes the content closer to the viewer.
• Monetization If you meet these requirements, you can participate in the Twitch affiliate program, with which you will have access to Bits, a form of a donation from viewers, and 5% of revenue from sales of games you make on your profile. What requirements are they? :

1. At least 500 minutes of broadcast in the last 30 days.
2. 7 days of issue in the last 30 days.
3. An average of 3 simultaneous spectators at least in the last 30 days.
4. At least 50 followers.

• Twitch and Amazon ?. This platform has a membership that links with Amazon Prime. With it, you can get a subscription to Twitch Prime. These users will receive advantages such as:

1. Downloadable content
2. Discounts
3. Do not see advertising in videos.
4. And more!

5. Sprout Video

What characterizes Sproutvideo?

• Security. IP and geographic restriction, in addition to multiple settings for the privacy of your videos through passwords.
• Analysis. Analytics of popularity, downloads, location, impressions, reproductions, data on how your viewers have arrived, when and from where they are viewing your videos.
• CTAs Calls to action, option to add forms to collect information about users and email marketing.
• Quality of the videos. It can support up to 8K videos and in any format.
• Customizable video lists. Design your own playlists and customize the player to your liking.
• API For more advanced users, it has its own API.

6. IGTV

What characterizes IGTV?

• Accessibility. It’s in the same Instagram application and you don’t need to download anything else. The followers you already have will be your own audience for your videos. But, they won’t be the only ones to see you!
• Within everyone’s reach. If your video is among the most popular videos of the moment, it can be viewed by many more users.
• Duration of the videos. If your account is verified, you can upload videos of up to 1 hour with a maximum weight of 5.4 GB. On the contrary, if it is not, you can upload 10-minute videos weighing a maximum of 650 MB.
• Currently, there is NO official monetization method. But creators can generate income from sponsorships with brands or selling their own services and products.
• Use of Hashtags Like the rest of your posts, you can continue to use hashtags to reach more people.
• Edit your cover Your videos will have a cover that you can use to get more attention from users.
• You can use it as a medium for your YouTube channel. Take advantage of the first minutes of your videos on IGTV because, if you make a good impression and want to know more about yourself, it can serve as a medium to your YouTube channel.

In conclusion

Video platforms are not only a star opportunity for everything we have mentioned before, but also as a means of learning, entertainment, knowledge, current affairs and, we say again, long etcetera because the options for Taking advantage of these means are immense. That is why they help us so that we can be increasingly self-taught.

It should be said that today, we consume more and more audiovisual content, and an example of this is in Social Networks. Publications in which before we only saw the text, now we can accompany them with videos, gifs, or even within the networks themselves, we already find different types of video platforms, such as:

• Facebook with Facebook Watch.
• Instagram with Instagram TV.
• Twitter with Periscope.

In short, we have many video platforms to use as we want. I encourage you to try for yourself to know everything that each one gives you and how you can get the most out of them. You can also tell us if you use any of these platforms and what you use it for, so we can learn something new altogether.