Vlare

Vlare.tv (stylized with a Triangle as ▲VLARE) was a video sharing site created by Jan and Mel (Sudeurion) in an attempt to provide content creators with an alternative to YouTube.

The site was formerly owned by Jan but was given to WYSIWYG for an undisclosed amount. One year later, it was then given to Toby R.

The site combined elements of both Classic/Modern YouTube with Social Media as it aimed to increase the interactions between Content Creators and the people that are following their channels.

Vlare's development was temporarily discontinued by the former owner Kay (WYSIWYG) in February 2021 due to various technical issues and difficult time management. However, Kay was able to keep the Discord, Twitter and video archives of the website going up to May 2020. And there were plans for the Discord server to be renovated according to Kay, a month later Toby R and Bradley purchased Vlare and resumed development of the site with Dan.

On July 2021, Toby R had announced that Vlare would be cancelled due to realizing how much work was needed to be done to run and manage the site. Drama on the private developer server also played a factor (see below). He stated that all Patreon money will be refunded with in a few days. Up until August 27, all that was left of the site is a message stating what happened.

"Unfortunately, we have decided to terminate Vlare. We underestimated the efforts needed to run and manage Vlare and we are just as disappointed by this as anyone since this wasn't easy for us to say. We will be refunding all money donated via Patreon, within the next few days.

Thank you everyone, truly. It has been a blast getting to know and meet everyone from all around the world with all sorts of specialties. We wish you all the best of luck in the future, as we will miss you all."

As of August 15, the team stated that all forms of communication (emails, social media accounts etc) will be deleted on August 27, it was said in the following message on the remains on the site, replacing the old message in the process.

"Please see twitter for further information regarding Vlare. https://twitter.com/VlareTV/status/1419320254707216395"

"On August 27th, we will be terminating all further means of communication, including our emails and social media accounts."

Last and finale message change

"The Vlare project is terminated. Thank you for all the support given!

Consider checking out VidLii or Tracle for great alternative platforms!"

Vlare Social Media (These links will no longer work after August 27)

 * Twitter
 * Discord
 * Instagram

History
According to Plutonium Digital, Vlare was originally a video website.

During its early development, private sign-ups were conducted through VidLii, with a request to access to the private alpha (via Private//Direct Message).

The website was officially unveiled on December 10, 2018, and began public-testing in September. It would include it's own features, as well as well-regarded features YouTube has removed including Groups, Friends, Live-Chats, video sync-playback (such as Watch2Gether), and personal channel blogs.

On April 24th, 2019, Vlare's twitter account would announce that the Co-Founder of Vanillo Sudeurion had joined Plutonium as both a Content Creator and a Developer for the site, where he was assigned to design the Site's UI and to improve the site as it neared its launch.

It is confirmed Vlare plans to bring video annotations, a feature that YouTube removed back in January 2019. Vlare exited beta and became public on May 7th, 2019. In 6 months, Vlare gained over 3,000 sign-ups. In November 2019, the site experienced massive growth due to the COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) impact on YouTube. Slivr and Vanillo merged with Vlare around this time, and as a result, over 15,000 members joined, creating traffic that caused the development team to upgrade to a 40 Terabyte Server.

Starting the New Year of 2020, the development team had confirmed plans to release a major update currently referred to as "Vlare 2.0". This would've been a rebuild of the site and API as it promised to give the site a new interface and additional site features. But before these changes could be implemented, Melony resigned on December 15th, 2019 due to mental health concerns, though she had stated that she may rejoin the team and make a return in the future. (In which she did on January 17th, 2020)

In February 2020, Mel and BMF would lay off the Majority of Moderators due to their inactivity and slow growth on the site. And on the 14th, the Vlare Discord Server would become limited to those who were original members, patrons, and premium members due to the server being mostly inactive.

On May 7th 2020, Vlare celebrated its 1st birthday, & Melony returns to the Site.

On June 29th 2020, Vlare made a announcement which would make everyone have admin, which made the community concerned, but was actually a publicity stunt.

On August 17th 2020, Vlare went down in what many assumed to be a scheduled maintenance, In reality though, it was a DMCA-takedown notice issued by Hetzner, but was unable to get the message to the Vlare administration. This wasn't not the first time Vlare went down, as the site went down in May 2020 and mid-June 2020 in order to fix it's uploader.

On August 20th 2020, if one tries to visit the site with or without hesitant, they would be instead be redirected to VidLii, and there was a low chance that a message will show up on the top, which reads: "Vlare.tv is going to be offline for a bit. Please be patient."

On October 3rd 2020: Vlare‘s first snapshot was released by Kay.

On October 31st 2020, WYSIWYG announced that she was unable to work on Vlare due to a shortage of free time and other private circumstances that prevented her from developing. She also announced that she'll will resume development once she is able to work on Vlare again.

On Dec 8th, 2020, Kay added a new landing page for Vlare.

On February 8th, 2021, Kay announced she was ceasing development. -

On Feb 23rd, 2021, Vlare added another new landing page shortly after it was announced the site was sold to Toby R. and Bradley.

On March 25th, There was a new Vlare site, having reached 25% development.

On March 27th, Toby released screenshots for the new site.

On April 7th, Toby released an extra screenshot of Vlare 2.0.

1 month later on May 7th, the Dev Team announced that the new Vlare had reached 50 percent completion and would begin Beta Testing for anybody that's invited.

On July 25th, 2021. Toby announced that Vlare had been cancelled (this came in the event of an ex-staff member leaking controversial information from their private server in which Administrators can be seen speaking ill of other developers and the community as a whole). According to a message on their website as of August 15, all their Emails and social media accounts will be deleted on August 27. On that day, that message was changed to recommend visitors to try VidLii and Tracle, though the Twitter page still exists.

Vlare Snapshots
When Kay was the site's developer and owner, she would release Snapshots that are like little versions of Vlare that would release every 2 Months, the pages for snapshots were on this page: https://snapshot.vlare.tv/

Features
The website had a vertical navigation toolbar with quick access to all options.

Like VidLii, Vlare.TV allows free hosting for videos with up to 720p@30fps up to a certain file size. Users with Vlare Premium are currently granted uploads up to 1080p@60fps. Vlare Premium also comes with a number of other benefits, including: These monthly subscriptions further the site by assisting with the costs of hosting the service and developing new features.
 * Video downloads
 * Animated avatars
 * Extended video file-size limits
 * Ad-free viewing
 * Premium role in their official Discord server

Vlare.TV included many smaller features to all members to compete with other video sites including: Vlare.TV maintains features that have been gradually removed from YouTube over the years, including:
 * Multi-channel management under a single account
 * A real-time count of active viewers of the current video.
 * Custom thumbnails
 * Content-specific channel categories
 * Animated video previews for all uploads
 * Mobile website layout, in addition to Desktop website layout
 * Channel blogs and blog categories
 * Statistics about each channel
 * Public statistics across the entire site
 * Quick-list (similar to YouTube "Watch-later" feature)
 * Groups
 * Video responses
 * Ability to see currently watched videos
 * Ability to sort videos by ratings
 * Ability to explore the most rated, discussed, or viewed videos of today, this week, this month or all time, or newest videos
 * Custom channel backgrounds, text color, transparency, layouts, widget colors
 * Direct messaging
 * Live chat with other users
 * Friends (separate from Subscribers)

For Vlare 2.0, (which had been scrapped due to development issues and community infighting) the team planned to include:
 * Live Streaming
 * Watch along feature
 * New Algorithm
 * Website Themes
 * New UI
 * Annotations
 * New API for future updates
 * Additional channel categories

For Vlare 2.1, (which had been Discontinued due to Kay no longer having the motivation to work on the site) the team planned to include:


 * Vlare Creator Studio
 * Live Subscriber Count

Flaws

 * 1080p resolution and 90-minute duration is currently only available to Premium members.
 * Edits to comments can only be made within a certain time frame.
 * Guidelines can be considered strict when compared to other similar sites.
 * Video thumbnail previews are auto-generated as low-quality GIFs by the uploader.
 * Vlare lacks comment linking, as used by YouTube.
 * Video time limit was only 45 minutes to regular users, while Premium Users had 90.

Status of Former Vlare Admins
Melony: It was revealed that Kay, Melony, and WYSIWYG were the same person, and in February 2021, she stopped the development of Vlare and sold the domain and archives to Toby R, who would later announce his intentions to revive it himself. Unfortunately this isnt the case anymore as he cancelled development on July 2021

BMF: "Quite a confusing one I DMed him on discord and he said that he got demoted for something inappropriate. Yet Kay said that he left for the better for this year." After his departure from Vlare, BMF (like Jan) shifted his focus to VidLii, where he currently moderates as of March 2021 in spite of the controversies surrounding him.

Jan: After selling the site to Kay (who later sold it to Toby), Jan shifted his focus back to VidLii (which had been making a profit), where he began a long-term project to rebuild the site from the ground up in a similar fashion to Vlare 2.0.