Vimeo gears up for global expansion: Adds Spanish support, German and French on the way

Vimeo, the more artistic of video services, only recently held its annual Vimeo Awards Festival, and now the company is heads down again, preparing for its next step: global expansion. Starting with the second most spoken language on Vimeo, a Spanish version of the site is now available for users, and with that support for payments with the Euro is also here.

With this news in mind, the company has also announced that German and French localizations are on the way as well, which we’ve been told will arrive “by the end of 2012.” All in all, this step is extremely important for the company, as its international audience is already there (64% of Vimeo’s traffic comes from outside North America), but with some nurturing could grow rapidly.

Right now, Vimeo has just under 12 million registered users with over 70 million unique visitors per month. On the topic of success, only a few days ago a question on Quora blew up, asking: “Why did YouTube succeed whereas Vimeo failed?” Josh Abramson’s answer (Founding partner of Vimeo) is certainly worth a look, but I still see the question as contrived.

This may largely be because of my love of seeing more “designed” and artfully created work, but I’ve long felt that YouTube is to television, while Vimeo is to film. Comparing just numbers alone could be missing the point, and clearly Vimeo is still pushing hard for growth.