Vimeo Finally Gives The iPhone Some Love

The YouTube competitor (if you even want to call it that) Vimeo has finally decided to give the iPhone and iPod touch some love by re-encoding some of its most popular videos to work on our Flash-less devices. According to CNet, Vimeo's iPhone and iPod touch video support was officially launched on Wednesday.  Vimeo only chose to re-encode its most popular videos at this time, which includes staff picks and HD video showcase, but they do intend on adding more compatibility in the near future.

"We've been working on it for the last few weeks," Blake Whitman, Vimeo's director of community told CNET News. "This is sort of the prelude of offering Plus members iPhone support; and in the future, an app," he said. In the meantime, the only member videos that get chosen to get the mobile encoding treatment are those that get picked by the site's editors. "In the future, like the next several weeks--maybe longer, we'll be offering Plus users the option to transcode their videos to an iPhone version too." Whitman says those special encodes could end up as a download option alongside the links to the source file, letting users save a copy that could be played back offline.

You can access the mobile version of Vimeo at vimeo.com/m/. Most iPhone and iPod touch users turn to YouTube for their video needs since the service automatically encodes iPhone-friendly versions of any video that is uploaded free of charge, and most of their videos have already been re-encoded to work on the devices, so it is really a no-brainer. It's possible that you just may see more Vimeo videos popping up on our site.  We have done our very best to avoid embedding them, at least up to this point, because many of our readers access the site via their iPhone or iPod touch.

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