Trigger Warning: Somewhere during July 2021 The domain was acquired by a pornography company and it now leads to a NSFW site, continue at your own risk.
Note: This page talks about a project that is confirmed to be no longer worked on/or is discontinued, however the article will be kept for historical purposes,
Vid.me was a video hosting website that was launched at 22 January 2014 and closed in 15 December 2017.
History
In 2014, Warren Shaeffer and Alex Benzer would create Vidme in Los Angeles, California as a hybrid of both Reddit and YouTube. When coming up with the name, the site was originally called Viddme but would eventually be renamed to Vidme by taking out one of the "D"s in the name.
In April of 2015, Vidme would secure $3.2 million in Series A funding thanks to Mark Suster from Upfront Ventures and Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian and would earn 30 million unique visitors per month. And in December of 2016, Vidme would receive $6 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates.
At its peak, the site would became one of the top 1,000 most popular destinations on the web,reaching over 200 million people annually and deliver over 6 billion views to audiences around the world, and their player was frequently embedded by major online publications, including the Huffington Post, USA Today, Mashable, People, and Sports Illustrated. But in December 2017, as a result of not being able to finding a sustainable model and an increase in competition, Vidme would shut down on December 15, 2017 with only being around for 3 years.
Or at least that's the official story of why the site shut down but the truth of the matter is that the site was poorly run, the admins constantly laughed off Mattwo's warnings about the declining Alexa rank, frequently ignored criticism from people such as Mattwo, Eli the Computer Guy (who was labeled a "Vidme troll") and Foldable Human and the site died shortly after the Kentantino controversy, just as ZippCast died after its own users turned on the owner.
Sometime during July of 2021, the domain was acquired by a unknown pornographic company, visiting the URL now takes the user to what appears to be a "onlyfans alternative", as a result of the company buying the domain news articles and social media posts with an embedded Vidme video instead displayed hardcore pornography. The Washington Post, New York Magazine and The Guardian were some of the major news sites that were affected.
Criticism and Controversy
In 2015 through 2017, Vidme would become a subject of criticism by people such as former user Mattwo and YouTubers Foldable Human, and Eli The Computer Guy (who for some reason deleted his videos on the site) who all criticized the poor management, with Eli in particular doing so after being offered and declining a job with Vidme due to his distaste of how admins were handling things.
The MrATAndreiThomas controversy
TBA
The Vidme Civil War/Kentantino controversy
When a user named Kentantino got banned from Vidme, users on the Vidme Discord asked why. An admin named Duffy responded by saying that it's because he talked to Eli the Computer Guy, who Duffy labeled as a "Vidme troll", this was quickly deleted but users with logs enabled managed to save it (though it's gone for good now that Vidme is dead). This lead many Vidme users to campaign for Kentantino's unbanning.
The site shortly afterwords began to increase restrictions on uploads, even for verified users, while the users continued to campaign for the unbanning and shortly after that, the site died. It's not clear if this is because the admins refused to listen to criticism and actually improve the site or if it's because they were narcissists like Louis who couldn't handle so many of their users going against them or if it's both.
Gallery
