Today Vimeo – the video sharing site that is like YouTube if it went to film school – announced its most recent slate of original programs. The site is just the latest example of a streaming service getting into original programming following the likes of Amazon Prime and market leader Netflix. It’s like the Hunger Games but with more buffering.  Related: Viceland: Vice's foray into CNN-style cable TV is a mixed bag  The site’s new projects include Wizard Mode, a feature-length documentary about an autistic child who became a pinball savant, inspired by a short that was popular on the service a few months back. There’s Lonely and Horny, a comedy series by former College Humor writer Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld about the indignities of modern single life; Toro Y Moi: Live and In Concert, a recording of one of the chillwave artist’s gigs; and Garfunkel and Oates: Trying to be Special, a musical comedy special by the ukulele-toting duo whose IFC show was cancelled last year. All of the principals of these projects have produced previous work that proved popular on Vimeo. This “organic” approach, with film-makers emerging from the site’s existing community, is a crucial element of Vimeo’s originals strategy.  “The most important thing for us is to differentiate in the marketplace,” says Sam Toles, global head of content acquisition and distribution, about how they chose which projects to greenlight. “We’re leaning into different areas. We really wanted to find a way to empower [our creators] and to further their exposure and careers by investing in content from the community.”  Vimeo also announced the premiere date for the second season of The Outs, a popular and critically beloved web series that is currently available on the service. The laziest way to describe it is as a gay version of Girls, but the series is actually much better and more nuanced than that. The second season, which was funded by Vimeo, will premiere on Wednesday 30 March.  They’re targeted at young teenage girls whereas our audience is used to high-quality productions that push the envelope  So far, Vimeo has an excellent track record with its original programing, as modest as the number of offerings has been. Its first show, High Maintenance, another critical darling with a cult following, is now being made into a series for HBO. There have been two other original releases: Darby Forever, a short by Saturday Night Live’s Aidy Bryant, and Rolodex of Hate, a standup special by RuPaul’s Drag Race season 6 winner Bianca Del Rio.  Google’s YouTube is following a similar path to Vimeo, giving some of their best creators money to make original programming and charging viewers to watch it. YouTube Red, which launched in February, is very similar to what Vimeo is trying to do, but on a larger scale. Vimeo, which is owned by digital giant IAC, is investing between $10m and $12m a year on making its own content. So far, neither YouTube nor Vimeo can compete with the $6bn that Netflix says it will spend on original content in 2016.  “I think tactically it’s similar but the kind of creators we have and the kind YouTube has is where the differentiation comes from,” Toles says. “I think YouTube has really leaned on kids shouting at the camera and makeup tips and tricks. They’re targeted to the young teenage girl whereas our audience is used to high-quality productions and pushing the envelope.”  Related: High Maintenance: the weed-smoking comedy set to change the face of the webseries  Toles likens Vimeo to Bloomingdales and YouTube to Walmart. Walmart is apt for YouTube, which has nearly 170m unique views a month, according to ComScore, whereas Vimeo clocks nearly 45m.  The other differentiation between the two, and something that sets Vimeo apart from every other streaming service, is that it is not subscription-based. Instead of paying $10 a month for YouTube Red in perpetuity, users only pay for the shows or movies that they want to see, usually in the neighborhood of $5-$10, depending on the budget and length of the program. They can also pay a bit extra and buy the movies instead of renting them.  With all of these sites growing and many of them keeping their metrics to themselves, defining success can sometimes be murky, but Toles says that each of the three originals they have released so far has exceeded financial expectations. “The important thing is the desire of the creators to continue to want to work with us and our ability to recoup and make margins on the investments in our programming,” Toles says. “We’ve been very successful.”
The streaming service will spend up to $12m on new shows this year to compete with big-spending Netflix by offering high-end productions