Despite occasional confusion from fans labeling us as “Vimeo’s Short of the Week”, this site is unaffiliated with Vimeo proper. Yet, one could forgive the confusion when looking at our picks, the vast majority of which are hosted on the 10 year old service. Among our niche of professional and aspiring pro filmmakers, Vimeo has a monopoly position as hosting service of choice, which is why a recent article from Indiewire’s Chris O’Falt piqued our attention this week.

Titled, “As Vimeo CEO Exits, The Question Remains: Can the Popular Platform Become a Profitable Indie Market?” O’Falt takes stock of the company after a spate of recent shakeups, including this week’s departure of CEO Kerry Trainor, hot on the heels of the company’s CTO, Andrew Pile, stepping down, as well as its GM of Vimeo On Demand, Greg Clayman, leaving late last year.

“Last week, Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor announced he was stepping down as the leader of the streaming service. The move comes at a time when the company has grown tremendously — going from 40 to 200 employees and increasing their revenue five-fold during Trainor’s four years at the helm — but has yet to find a concrete way to transition their platform to being a place where customers come to buy content.

In many ways, Vimeo’s situation reflects the same predicaments faced by indie filmmakers:  It’s never been easier to generate and share high quality content that will find an audience online, but without advertising, how can independent content creators monetize their work?”

O’Falt goes on to explicate Vimeo’s strategy of the last several years—create Vimeo On Demand, a two-sided marketplace which empowers creators to rent and sell work directly to audiences and thus monetizes both sides of the content equation, invest in high quality but niche originals like High Maintenance to build exposure and establish audience tentpoles, then eventually leverage it all into an all-inclusive subscription service like a Netflix or Hulu.

While not explicitly linking the departures of senior managers to a failure of this strategy, it is clear that O’Falt finds it an open question.

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For the purposes of this site and the filmmakers and audiences we service, Vimeo’s free streaming service and its attendant audience is the bedrock, so the company’s forays into paid content have always seemed somewhat tangential. Most have come to terms with the market’s inability to monetize short films, and instead have embraced the size and influence of Vimeo’s large community of creative professionals who take a chance on viewing serious, unheralded, but cutting edge, artistic work. The benefits of exposure in terms of professional opportunity, branding and networking are difficult to quantify, but universally acknowledged.

But even if you don’t plan to sell your short film on the service anytime soon, worries about Vimeo’s growth strategy should alarm you. The truth of business is that if you’re not growing, you’re in fact dying. Many interviews with Trainor and even Barry Diller, Chairman of Vimeo’s parent corporation, IAC, have indicated that the growth of Vimeo’s paid offerings have been the company’s main focus, and any potential rethinking of this strategy calls into question Vimeo’s upside potential, and could affect IAC’s investment in the site, and possibly even make it a target for sale. Difficulties in directly monetizing content could cause IAC or a potential new owner to revisit Vimeo’s legendary refusal of  pre-roll advertising.

In the short term Vimeo free streaming offerings will likely remain steady, but, while O’Falt points to the relative health of Vimeo’s core offerings, its Plus and Pro subscriptions for content creators, providing pricey tools for creators is an inherently niche offering for a property of Vimeo’s reach. Even then, the future of this business is far from secure as the development of Facebook Video cuts into Vimeo’s role as the default non-YouTube hosting option, and the emergence of startups like Wipster and Frame IO attack the company on the professional services end.

These departures will serve as an inflection point for the company, and for all of us very attached to the unique ecosystem that Vimeo has been able to cultivate, the decisions that result will deserve close attention.

(Editor’s Disclosure: Short of the Week site founder Jason Sondhi previously served as Vimeo’s Lead Curator in charge of Staff Picks)