The lack of Flash support on the iPhone and iPod touch has made it rather difficult for Flash-based video sites to penetrate the ever-expanding smartphone video-consuming market. While YouTube has implemented a workaround for this problem by encoding each uploaded video in both Flash AND as .mp4 files, other sites have been much slower to rollout a fix while waiting for Adobe to get this mess straightened out.

That was, until today. Blake Whitman, Vimeo’s director of community, told CNET News earlier today that the popular video sharing site is rolling out support for the iPhone and iPod touch, yet on a limited basis. More specifically, Vimeo has re-encoded all of its staff picks and HD video showcase for playback on iPhone/iPod touch handset.

According to Whitman, “[Vimeo has] been working on it for the last few weeks. This is sort of the prelude of offering Plus members iPhone support; and in the future, an app.” At the moment, Vimeo’s editors handpick which members’ videos will get the mobile “treatment,” but over time the site will slowly allow its Plus users the option to transcode their videos to an iPhone/iPod touch version.

Clearly, this is not an end all, be all solution, but it is nice to see Vimeo make an effort to accommodate the iCommunity. The mobile-friendly site was rumored to become available for iPhone/iPod touch users today.

{Source: Cnet}