This is my opinion…. Both suck but in different ways.
Before you say use another browser or don’t block adverts, I will say forget it. If a site doesn’t work correctly with Firefox as well as other browsers then it shouldn’t expect any sympathy if it’s live on the interweb.
Youtube
Has some very annoying habits like autoplay, auto-jump to the next video, not logically listing videos and having a very inefficient layout.
The layout maybe efficient when you consider that they are trying to display adverts but ignoring the adverts and concentrating on the video content, it’s not so good.
If randomly watching or loosely following a theme it works well enough – dumb-ass entertainment. But if you want to follow a series of videos or a specific theme, it becomes very frustrating.
Vimeo
I like the way Vimeo has “proper” or “created” content only. None of the crap TV and video game captures that Youtube hosts.
The old Vimeo is/was quite good for browsing and watching videos. A few problems: The search doesn’t always put things in time order and the upload process is very unreliable. The slide bar on the right of the videos box on the right doesn’t work properly. If the mouse goes out of the bar it becomes a selector rather than slider. My browser (Firefox) never remembers my Vimeo log-in so it’s hard work to re-connect; so I generally don’t bother. Uploading usually fails on the first attempt; it gets stuck somewhere; you have to wait 40 minutes and try again to complete the process.
The new Vimeo has a few nice features but they are overshadowed by the poor layout and that you have to change pages so many times to navigate it. The other option is to open every click in a new tab but this soon gets messy.
It says on the “try it” page that you can comment. But try finding out how. So I decided to put my comments here. The old Vimeo with a bit of tweaking and a few bug fixes would be much better.
Overall Vimeo as a site or service seems to be broken. Maybe the site development is too complex or just always incomplete. Maybe it’s designed by committee.
Conclusion
Vimeo is just too buggy and for all it’s faults I may have to switch over to Youtube. On the positive side Youtube does have a larger user base; more potential views.
I get the impression that Youtube was created by experienced programmers directed by the marketing department, while Vimeo was created by programmers directed by the art department. Maybe Vimeo is a little too advanced for its own good.
A pity really as I much prefer the concepts behind Vimeo. I would use it more and probably pay for PLUS if it worked.