Loom, Vimeo, Scribe

Are these three companies even competitors?

Author

Noah Stambovsky
February 13, 2024

Welcome to TouchPoints, the newsletter that breaks down marketing collateral from top SAAS brands for inspiration and analysis.

This week we’re looking at 3 homepages. More specifically, we are looking at 3 companies that are vaguely in competition with eachother.

So before we begin, let’s examine the positioning and product of Loom, Vimeo, and Scribe.

Loom is likely the most popular solution for sharing short screen-share videos. They have always positioned themselves as a more personal way of sharing information with teammates and prospective buyers. They have also leaned heavily into meeting-replacement.

Vimeo has been around since the early days of the internet, and includes a suite of video-based tools. Very few people realize that Vimeo’s chrome extension matches or exceeds the functionality of Loom in every way. Because Vimeo’s product is more broad, it seems like they have not put much effort into competing with Loom.

Scribe is not a video platform, but it is an alternative to Loom. Much like a video platform, Scribe uses a screen recording function. Instead of a video, Scribe’s AI-enhanced tool lets you record any process you can think of, and then immediately turn it into an instructional PDF. In many ways, this self guided mixture of screenshots and written instruction is more useful than a video.

Ok, now that we have delineated how our 3 featured tools can be considered competitors, let’s dive in!

Loom

  • Video messaging

  • Founded 2015

  • 51-200 employees

Homepage

Vimeo

  • Video hosting & production

  • Founded 2004

  • 1000-5000 employees

Homepage

Scribe

  • Instructional document creation

  • Founded 2019

  • 11-50 employees

Homepage

Observations

The Fluff Conundrum

Fluff is by far the most contentious and divisive element of copy I highlight. It is also the only one with a purely negative connotation.

I want to address what I mean when I classify a piece of copy as both fluff and another element of copy.

I see fluff in more positive terms than you may think. To me, the essence of fluff is that it is a glittering generality that could be put more simply, and often adds no new information. Very often, fluff sounds great.

In the above pages, I marked both Loom and Vimeo as having fluff on their homepage.

Why? Because those headlines are fluffy in nature. But, I also marked them both as category statements, and I think that while they do feel a little vague, they both delineate the broad category of the product.

As for scribe, their headline couldn’t be further from fluff. It is a clear and simple capability statement without pretense.

How Do You Document Processes?

How do you share processes and tutorials with customers and coworkers?

For many of us, a Loom video is the go-to choice.

I personally prefer Vimeo for creating quick screenshare videos.

When I tell people how great Vimeo is, they look at me like I just told them to trade in their car for a horse-drawn carriage.

But the truth is Vimeo's chrome extension is feature-for-feature ahead of Loom.

Especially for free users, because there is no limit on video length.

And yes, there is a desktop app AND a chrome extension available at no charge.

This presents an interesting conundrum about positioning and use cases.

Vimeo has a longer standing product, and a much more broad positioning.

For many, a Scribe PDF is EVEN BETTER than a video in the same use case.

When I want to cover all my bases and document a specific process, I actually fire up scribe and vimeo at the same time. 5 ish minutes later, I have a nice instructional PDF AND a video, after only performing the process once.

Any Questions?

Looking for more explanation about the elements of copy that I highlight? Check out my guide here.

Anything further? I'm happy to take a break from scrolling linkedin & eating chocolate chip cookies to address your questions.

Email me here.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to extend our thanks to the following companies for providing examples and insights that made this edition of Touchpoints possible:

I sincerely appreciate these companies for providing great tools for research. It's collaborators like them that allow us to deliver the best of modern SaaS marketing to you, our subscribers, every week in TouchPoints