Vimeo is an American video hosting, sharing and software service founded in 2004 and based in New York City. Users upload videos, and site owners embed them on web pages. The company sells software as a service (SaaS), which means paid software accessed through a web browser.
History of Vimeo
Creator: Jake Lodwick and Zach Klein. Year: 2004.
Vimeo was built during fall 2004 by Connected Ventures. Connected Ventures is the parent company of the humor website CollegeHumor. Web developers Jake Lodwick and Zach Klein built it. It began as a side project. They wanted to share and tag short videos with friends. The site launched publicly on December 15, 2004. Lodwick made the name by combining the words video and me. The name is also an anagram of movie. Early accounts needed an invitation during a beta test. Public registration opened on June 18, 2005.
In August 2006, InterActiveCorp (IAC) bought a 51% stake in Connected Ventures. Barry Diller led IAC. The deal also gave IAC voting control. The price was US$21 million. IAC bought because CollegeHumor drew about 6 million visitors a month. Google bought YouTube for US$1.65 billion in October 2006. By early 2007, IAC put Lodwick, Klein and Andrew Pile on Vimeo full time. The team chose to focus on content creators, not popularity. In October 2007, Vimeo became the first video sharing site to offer high-definition (HD) content through Flash playback. IAC fired Lodwick in 2007. Klein left in early 2008.
Vimeo moved into a corporate structure under IAC. It became a standalone public company in May 2021. It traded on Nasdaq under the ticker VMEO until 2025. As of December 2021, the site had 260 million users. It also had about 1.6 million paying subscribers. In December 2024, Vimeo had 1,102 employees. The company reported revenue of US$417 million for 2024. Its headquarters remain in New York City.
Changelog and latest update
Vimeo added 4K support in December 2014. 4K means video with about 4,000 pixels across the frame. Users could download 4K files at first. Streaming was not offered. Few 4K screens were in use. Streaming of 4K content started in 2015. Adaptive bitrate streaming came with it. In March 2017, Vimeo added 360-degree video support. That included virtual reality (VR) platforms. It also covered stereoscopic video. It also added a guide series on filming 360-degree video. High dynamic range (HDR) video up to 8K came in 2017. In June 2019, Vimeo added AV1 encoding. AV1 is a video compression format.
Vimeo bought VHX in May 2016. VHX is a platform for premium subscription video channels. Over-the-top (OTT) means video delivered over the internet. Vimeo offered VHX as a service to its subscribers. In September 2017, Vimeo bought Livestream. It built Livestream's streaming technology into Vimeo Live. Later, it offered Vimeo OTT for subscription channels. These additions moved the company from a video sharing site. They moved it toward a software provider.
Latest update: Bending Spoons acquisition completed, 2025-11-24
In September 2025, Bending Spoons agreed to buy Vimeo. The all-cash deal was valued at US$1.38 billion. Shareholders would receive US$7.85 per share in cash. On November 24, 2025, Bending Spoons US completed the acquisition. Vimeo became a wholly owned subsidiary of Bending Spoons US. The company filed a report about the completion with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Usage examples
Vimeo gives each uploaded video a numeric ID. The ID appears in the page address, such as vimeo.com/ID, and in the player address, such as player.vimeo.com/video/ID. Site owners paste an iframe into a web page to show a video. An iframe is an HTML element that loads another page inside the current page. Developers load the Vimeo Player SDK, a JavaScript library, to control playback and to listen for events such as play and pause. Replace ID with the number of your own video in every example.
<iframe id="vid"
src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/ID"
width="640" height="360"
frameborder="0"
allow="autoplay; fullscreen"
allowfullscreen></iframe>Places a Vimeo player in the page at 640 by 360 pixels. The src value is the player address for the video ID. The allow attribute permits autoplay and full screen. The allowfullscreen attribute lets viewers open the video in full screen mode. The id attribute lets JavaScript find the frame.
npm install @vimeo/playerAdds the official Vimeo Player SDK to a project. npm is the Node Package Manager, a tool that downloads JavaScript packages. The package provides a Player class that controls an embedded Vimeo iframe from JavaScript code.
import Player from '@vimeo/player';
const player = new Player('vid');
player.on('play', () => {
console.log('Playing');
});Creates a player for the iframe that has the id vid. The play event runs the function each time the video starts. The constructor also accepts the iframe element itself. Other events in the SDK include pause and ended.
curl -sI \
"https://vimeo.com/ID"Requests only the response headers of the public video page. curl is a command-line tool that sends web requests. The first line of the reply shows the HTTP status code. A status of 200 means the page exists and loads for the request.
References
These sources are outside Websnoogie and were checked on 2026-10-12.
Vimeo - Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia article that covers the 2004 founding, the CollegeHumor origin, IAC ownership, the 2021 public listing and the 2025 Bending Spoons deal. Each claim links to a cited primary source, such as a filing or a press report, so readers can check the dates.
About Vimeo
Vimeo
Official company page. It states the 2004 founding and lists the tools for creating, editing, hosting, managing and sharing video, including the player, live streaming, webinars and analytics. It also gives user, subscriber and employee counts.
Vimeo Press
Vimeo
Official Vimeo press page for news, announcements and media resources about the company. Use it to find company statements and the press material that Vimeo publishes about its products and its ownership.
Vimeo API reference
Vimeo Developers
The official Vimeo developer reference for its REST API. Developers use it to read and change videos, folders and accounts through HTTP requests that carry an access token issued to their app.
vimeo/player.js
GitHub (Vimeo)
Official Vimeo repository for the Player SDK. The README shows the npm install command for the @vimeo/player package and the Vimeo.Player constructor used to control an embedded iframe from JavaScript code.
Launch day for a video page
On launch day, a video page either plays or it sits blank. Visitors notice a dead player within seconds, and many leave without a second try. Before we go live, we check that every embedded Vimeo video loads, plays with sound and fits a phone screen.
We have worked in web design since 2004, and our company began in 2012. That gives us more than 20 years of web design experience to bring to each video page. We know which small problems hide until the page is public, so we look for them first.
A video embed needs a few extra checks. We test the player on a phone, on a laptop and on a slow connection. Then we fix each problem we find, and only after that do we publish the page.
Reach our office at 402-813-4034, open every day from 7 am until 10 pm, and we will review your video page with you. You can also use the button below to start. Our $300 build covers a contact page and up to five pages, paid once.
