video websites

Alternatives to YouTube

htfvs video websites

In the English speaking world, YouTube is by far the most popular video sharing site.  Despite its huge size, and being regarded as the go-to site for finding videos, there is a lot of user-uploaded video content available on other video sharing sites.

Vimeo and Dailymotion, two common alternatives to YouTube

Vimeo logo

Vimeo was launched in November 2004, making it a n older video sharing site than YouTube (Youtube was launched in February 2005).  Vimeo also had HD video capabilities before YouTube did.  Vimeo is often used for more professional looking videos such as short films, independent music videos, and mini-documentaries (especially for embedding in websites).

Dailymotion logo

Dailymotion was released about a month after YouTube.  It was developed in France, and is popular in the French speaking world.

Foreign language video sharing sites

There are some very popular foreign language video sharing sites that are almost unheard of by the English speaking monolinguals.

Chinese: Youku, ku6.com, 56.com, Tudou
Japanese: Nico Nico Douga (registration required for watching videos).
German: MyVideo
French: Wat.tv

List of video sharing sites

On L-Lists, there is quite possibly the most comprehensive list of video sharing sites on the internet, with over 120 sites listed:

List of sites like YouTube

Unlisted Videos – A website for finding unlisted YouTube videos.

htfvs video search, video websites

Unlisted Videos

Background

YouTube has three main privacy options:

  • Public – Videos that will appear in the search results and the video uploader’s channel.
  • Private – Videos that won’t appear in the search results nor the video uploader’s channel, that can only be watched by those given permission by the video uploader.
  • Unlisted – Videos that won’t appear in the search results (except possibly in playlists) nor the video uploader’s channel, but can be watched by anyone who has a link to the video, or access to a webpage that embeds the video.

The unlisted feature was introduced in 2010, and is often used by major accounts (celebrities, musicians, big businesses etc) for videos such as: live performances, behind the scenes videos, hard to find Easter eggs etc.

Unlisted Videos (unlistedvideos.com)

Unlisted Videos is a website by the New Zealand based company, Statistical Consultants Ltd, that lets people submit, search, and watch unlisted YouTube videos. That is:

  • Submit – You can submit the URL of an unlisted YouTube video along with the necessary descriptive content. Unlisted Videos checks to see if it is an unlisted YouTube video, and if it is (and the necessary info has been filled out), it is submitted to the website. Registration is not required for URL submission.
  • Search – The submitted unlisted videos can be searched for via the website’s search form. Clicking on YouTube channel names and keyword tags, also takes you to a set of search results.
  • Watch – Each of the submitted unlisted videos has its own webpage on the Unlisted Videos website. These webpages will either have that video embedded or a link to the video on YouTube (if embedding isn’t permitted). The video webpages will also have info such as, the video title and description, clickable keyword tags, date of upload (to YouTube), date of submission (to Unlisted Videos), a clickable YouTube account user name (i.e. the username of the YouTube video publisher, that upon clicking will take the user to a list of all videos on Unlisted Videos from that user).

Unlisted Videos have a set of rules and guidelines which are aimed at preventing copyright infringements and privacy breaches. In most cases, the unlisted videos of celebrities, musicians, big businesses, universities etc, are permitted; but the unlisted videos of the average person aren’t.