9 Free Alternatives to YouTube

Last month, we brought you our Top 10 Science Videos from Astronomy to Physics for our Friday diversion blog post. For May’s installment, we’re carrying on with the video theme and sharing some of the best platform alternatives to YouTube. Yes, there are other viable alternatives for you to consider.

inspire friday diversion alternatives to youtube may 24While BCcampus and partner institutions are looking for a shared service solution to video hosting using Kaltura, we thought we’d present some interesting free, cloud-based alternatives.

We’ve restricted our picks to English-language websites and highlighted the ones that have an educational component. We’re curious to know which ones you use or would recommend to others. Let us know in the comment section.

 

Here are 9 free alternatives to YouTube:

  1. Flickr: Most of us are familiar with Flickr’s well-established photo-sharing functionality – but did you know the site also facilitates video-sharing?
  2. Like Flickr, Photobucket is perhaps best known for its repository of images but it hosts an impressive assortment of videos too.
  3. Dailymotion is the world’s second largest video-sharing website, behind YouTube. As of November 2012, the site was the 31st most visited website in the world with over 116 million unique visitors accessing the site each month.
  4. Videojug is a video-sharing website with over 60,000 FREE, professionally produced how to videos and guides. The family and education site has videos on everything from ‘how to speed read’ to ‘how to understand quadratic sequences.’ This is truly a weird and wonderful site.
  5. Vimeo was created by filmmakers and video creators who wanted to share their creative work.” This site has become a centralized space for people to upload HD quality videos. Even the Whitehouse uses Vimeo to post high-definition versions of President Obama’s public addresses on the official White House channel.
  6. WatchKnow – Over 50,000 free videos for K-12 students indexed by subject. This is a fantastic educational resource for teachers, students and parents alike.
  7. SnagFilms – Offers the broadest collection of great independent movies you can watch on demand, for free, and share with others. These films encourage discovery and create community. Forget Netflix. Spend some time on this site, your cranium will thank you!
  8. Explore – We spent hours on this site, simply fascinated by the all the live nature cams and educational films. This takes Wild Kingdom to a whole new level.

Further exploration: We might all be watching online videos by 2015

photo credit: ashley rose, via photopin; cc