Vimeo's Ryan Hefner said in a blog post today that Couch Mode "works great" on iPads and Android tablets. In my testing of the feature today I did not find that to be the case.

In testing Couch Mode, I've often had to hit the pause button and then play again in order for any of the Vimeo videos to load. The navigation pane disappears too quickly, the browsing function doesn't surface much information through the touch interface and worst of all: Couch Mode doesn't include a full-screen option! It looks like full screen, but the browser remains at the top of your iPad. It's nice to be able to go from one video to the next, but the aesthetic cost is too high for me.

Of course YouTube's Leanback doesn't work on an iPad at all.

Probably the best low-friction way to enjoy a continuous flow of videos on an iPad is the app for StumbleUpon, which we reviewed last month. (StumbleUpon for the iPad: Like a Magic Carpet Ride for Your Brain)

If readers know of a better way to do it, please let us know. It could be argued that an effective tablet lean-back video experience is an essential requirement for any real viable online short-form alternative to traditional TV. That's "meaningful" not just for the industry and its commercial interests, but for the greater diversity of video content and perspectives on the world so well exemplified by Vimeo itself.

It would be great to see Vimeo nail a lean-back experience for the iPad. I don't think they've done it yet though.

The Web version is similar to the iPad and iPhone app. You can scroll through and view the videos that are in your social streams - shared by you and your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, YouTube network and so on.

But with the other new features added today, having a Web version makes a lot of sense. There's now a bookmarklet that will let you share videos from YouToube, Vimeo, and TEDTalks to ShowYou, as well as to Twitter or Facebook.

Even better, you now have the option to "Watch It Later." As you're browsing the app (or the Web if you're using the bookmarklet), you can flag videos by pushing the + sign icon. You can then keep a list of videos to watch later - when you're at another device, perhaps, or when you have a better network connection.

The video-browsing app launched last month to great praise, much of it comparing Showyou's reinvention of consuming videos on the iPad to Flipboard's reinvention of consuming blogs, tweets, and RSS feeds. The enthusiasm for the app doesn't just come from the tech press. Since its launch, Showyou says it's already fetched over 10 million videos from its users' Facebook and Twitter feeds, and the startup says that users watch, on average, more than 4 videos every time they open the app.

Showyou is rolling out an update today to address just that - and more. In addition to connecting Showyou to your Facebook, Twitter, and Vodpod accounts, you can add your YouTube, Vimeo, and Tumblr accounts. When you connect these services to Showyou, you'll be able to see the videos posted to the channels you subscribe to as well as by the people you follow.

Showyou is also expanding its "grid," upping the number of videos you'll be able to browse through on the app - up to 200 videos from friends and people you follow on social networks. The app now also includes the ability to try out the app without actually signing in via a new "Guest Access" button.

Recent statistics point to the fact that we're consuming more and more video via our mobile devices. That puts ShowYou in a good position to make not just the consumption, but the discovery of video a lot better.

The app is well-designed and easy-to-use. It includes a video recording interface that should make your mobile videos better, letting you capture video with focus control and grid alignment. Then, once recorded, you can edit and trim your videos, adding transitions, titles, special effects and music. Finished videos can be uploaded to Vimeo from within the app as well.

In fact, you'll be able to accomplish pretty much everything that you'd do on the Vimeo website from the new app: watch videos, download videos, organize your collection, edit titles and tags, share, and view your stats on daily plays and feedback.

The app is free, and I'd say it rivals Apple's own iMovie app which will set you back $4.99. The app is compatible with the iPhone and iPad 2, but requires a free Vimeo account in order to upload your content to the site.

Vimeo will deliver the optimal player - Flash, HMTL5 or native - based on a user's browser, as well as the appropriate video definition (HD, SD, mobile) and compression standard (H.264 or WebM, an open format developed for use with HTML5).

Embeddable HTML5 players have been available to those who can host their own content for awhile, but video-hosting sites have moved more slowly. Paris-based DailyMotion started experimenting with HTML5 over a year ago and is still demonstrating the player, which does not work in Chrome and "will never work in Internet Explorer."

YouTube has been experimenting with HTML 5 players on YouTube.com, and last month it announced a new embed code style for developers that made videos viewable with an HTML5 player. That feature has not been advertised to the general public, perhaps because YouTube videos with ads are not supported in the HTML5 player yet.

Vimeo also announced a "watch later" button today that will queue videos in a playlist for users to catch up on when they get home from work, for example. The "watch later" feature is also cued up to be added to Vimeo's Application Programming Interface, or API.

Bloggers who embed YouTube links tend to be male and young. The most active group of YouTube users is between 25 and 35 years old. Bloggers who embed YouTube videos are mostly male (58%), and Break.com is the most male-dominated video site (885), while MTV attracts more female bloggers (68%).

The most active video embed users live in the US, followed by Brazil, Spain, the UK and Canada. In the US, most of these YouTube users live in California, followed by New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida. The size of these states account for a large chunk of these differences. Connecticut, Alabama and South Carolina come in last.

Taking all video-sharing networks into account, the most active bloggers can be found in New York City, followed by Sao Paulo, London, Madrid and Paris.

In Asia, more than 90% of bloggers are younger than 35. In North America, 28% of all bloggers who embed videos are older than 35.

Focus on YouTube

Unsurprisingly, YouTube is the most popular video service in the blogosphere. The site attracts 82% of all embeds and direct links from blogs, followed by Vimeo (8.8%), DailyMotion (4%) and MySpace (1.1%). YouTube's dominance in this market becomes even more apparent when compared to other popular sites like Hulu and MTV. Hulu accounts for only 0.5% of all blog embeds, and MTV is dead last on Sysomos' list with 0.1%.

In Asia, YouTube is even more dominant, accounting for 88.5% of all embeds; and in South America, YouTube leads with an 87.4% market share. Some of these differences can be explained by the fact that some of the services that Sysomos looked at are simply not available in these markets.

More Data

Sysomos' report offers a lot more demographic information than we could highlight in detail, but here are a few more nuggets of interesting information:

• The most popular day for embedding videos is Tuesday.
• The most popular time is between 11:00 am and noon EST.
• YouTube's most active demographic group (20-35) is three times larger than the second-most active group (35-65).
• 20% of bloggers who embed YouTube videos are teenagers; 2.4% are over 60.

Desktop Uploader

The desktop uploader will allow Vimeo users to upload multiple videos at the same time. Users also won't have to worry about browser time-outs anymore, and the uploader will make it easy to pause and resume uploads if necessary.

Stats

The new stats package will aggregate data about likes and plays, referrer data, HD vs. SD plays, loads and finishes, as well as information about how often a video was shared and downloaded. Most of these features will be available only to users with paid accounts, though some of the more basic functions will also come to Vimeo's free accounts as well.

While the desktop uploader should be available fairly soon, Vimeo stated only that the advanced stats would be launched "before the end of the year."

Overall, it looks like Vimeo is on the right track with these updates. The uploader is useful, but the stats are a must for a paid online video service these days. Some of Vimeo's competitors like Blip and Viddler also offer stats, though Vimeo's new stats look to be far more in-depth than what its competitors currently offer.

We at ReadWriteWeb have had an awesome time gathering video content lately. We love it so much that we plan to do it a lot more. One of the discussions in the back channels has been about where to post our video content, and after considering a whole boatload of factors and testing several services, we've started posting content on our brand-new Vimeo account.

In the past, team members have used YouTube, Viddler, Blip, and a handful of other video services. We loved YouTube's HD, large-file capabilities, but we hated the media player and the YouTube watermark that ended up all over our lovely content. We adored Blip's customizable player, but our longer, in-depth interview videos were a bit too large for that format.

Our Vimeo Plus account will allow us to upload a healthy-to-ridiculous amount of HD video each week, and the speed of uploading and processing for Plus accounts is mind-reelingly fast. We'll also get to make widgets from our content. And we definitely love the very social component of groups and channels. We couldn't be more excited, and we hope to have a long and productive experience with Vimeo.

As a side note, this post isn't meant as an endorsement of Vimeo; different products work better for different purposes, as noted by many Twitter followers last week.

Another factor behind our decision was the surprisingly enthusiastic user response to Vimeo when we conducted an informal Twitter poll. Since you guys like the Vimeo platform and community so much, we hope you'll add us and check out our social media channel and our RWW group. We've added a few videos to the channel and group so far; if you have a video you'd like us to add to our curated content, just email us.

And as always, suggestions on how we can improve our video coverage are welcomed; just leave your erudite ponderings in the comments.

According to stories on Nextgov and Federal Computer Week, the GSA had a number of other legal concerns about the standard terms and conditions of these services, including problems with indemnification clauses, liability limits, and endorsements, which led it to enter negotiations with these services. Also, a lot of the standard agreements call for dispute resolutions by state courts, while for government agencies, federal law has to apply.

It is important to note that these new agreements only cover the free services offered by these companies. The GSA is also looking into expanding these agreements to a wider range of social media services.

A number of federal agencies, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Library of Congress already use services like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. To do so, however, these agencies either needed special waivers, or they negotiated terms directly with these services. Some of these initiatives have been very successful. Pictures from the Library of Congress, for example, have been viewed over 15 million times.

Library of Congress on iTunes

In addition, the Library of Congress today announced that it will begin to share more of its content on YouTube and, as podcasts, through Apple's iTunes. This initiative will launch in the next few weeks.

Engaging the Public

We are glad to see that the GSA has now removed some of the major stumbling blocks that stopped a large number of government agencies from using social media sites. Now we just hope that these agencies will also use these services to actually engage with citizens.

If a loyal user base - and USA Today - are to be believed, few user-generated video sites compare with Vimeo, a small but well-loved online video site with some of the best HD capabilities around. And after today, Vimeo is highly likely to be serving up more of that HD content, thanks to the release of Vimeo Plus.

But one feature stands out for anyone who has ever sat drumming his or her fingers while waiting for a video service to finish the encoding process: Buying Vimeo Plus entitles users to priority uploading. That alone may be worth $5 a month.

For all the new found freedom a paying user gets, the service still has some limits. NewTeeVee highlights some of the intricacies of the small print for Vimeo Plus, including the fact that - even with a Plus account - "HD embeds are limited to 1,000 plays." Going over that limit results in a reduction in definition until the user purchases more HD plays.

It's not just the paying customers that have limits. The free users have had some new limits added as well. Vimeo point out that "you'll only be able to upload one HD video per week. You will also be limited to creating 1 Group, 1 Channel and 3 Albums."

All in all, the trade-offs seem fair and aren't like to adversely impact users' opinions of Vimeo in the long run.

The Real Question: Can Vimeo Convert Loyal Users into Paying Customers?

Vimeo's user base is active and loyal - but relatively small. In these uneasy times for the online ad world, Vimeo's decision to trade unpredictable ad revenue for subscription revenue is shrewd. Why? Aside from the likelihood of higher revenues, the subscription base will give Vimeo a better chance of predicting its cash flow month-to-month. The higher-ups - especially when they're higher-ups like Barry Diller - tend to appreciate that kind of predictability.

But for all the predictability, will anyone bite? It's not unheard of for a loyal user base on a free service to translate into paying customers for a fee service - especially if the cost is reasonable. Flickr Pro immediately jumps to mind. With the nominal cost of Vimeo Plus, Vimeo has the potential to see that kind of conversion, as well.

Will the latest features and benefits cause those loyal users to step up? We'll have to watch - in HD - and see.

The VimeoLand toy gives a look at recent happenings on Vimeo. VimeoLand displays an interactive landscape of characters that represent the latest actions from Vimeo users. Hovering your mouse over a character will display a pop-up containing one of the following recent actions:

• A comment
• A like
• Recent signup
• Recent upload

Each action includes a link to the profile of the user who completed the action and a link to the video that the action took place on. What's a little random and unique about VimeoLand is an airplane that flies back and forth above the landscape. Clicking the plane will cause a random video to be dropped from the plane's cargo. It's pretty nifty. Vimeo fans will find this particular toy to be very useful and entertaining.

Currently there's only one other toy available. If you're looking for something less flashy than VimeoLand, we recommend Pulse.

Making Your Own Vimeo Toy

We're interested in seeing what other unique visuals developers will create with Vimeo Toys. To help developers get started, Vimeo has listed a sample XML file with over 50 activity items to choose from. Vimeo's team of workers will decide whether or not your toy is worth being featured on Vimeo. While this isn't a problem for us, we'd rather see the community take a vote on what stays and what goes.

What we think would be really interesting to see is for Vimeo and developers to take things to the next level. By this we mean seeing a visual graph of what our friends, or a select group of users, are up as a Vimeo Toy. The current offerings are still a little too random for our tastes. Nevertheless, we're happy with what we see so far and look forward to see what else is next.

Last week Vimeo published a blog post that the company is looking to take on a few developers. Vimeo is currently look for web application and flash developers with AIR development experience.

We're looking for superstar Flash developers:

• Do you have OOP experience in a language other than Flash?
• Does the prospect of your SWF being loaded 7 million times a day excite you?
• You have demonstrable design experience?
• Have you built a Flash video player before?
• Have you built Air applications?

Good News For Vimeo Users

If an AIR application does come down the pipeline, we're sure Vimeo users will be happy video campers. The description does enough to hint at a possible AIR app in the future and tons more. Vimeo users may also see some site changes and additions in the near future too if developers with these skillsets are signed on. Here's to hoping that a Vimeo AIR app comes soon!