YouTube Mobile goes global
The mobile Internet is huge and growing fast. According to a 2009 report, within five years more users will connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs.
YouTube consumption on mobile devices has also grown considerably: playbacks were up 160% in 2009 over the previous year and YouTube Mobile now receives more than 100 million video playbacks a day. According to YouTube, this is roughly the number of daily playbacks that YouTube.com was streaming when YouTube joined forces with Google in 2006.
YouTube launched on mobile devices in 2007 with about 1,000 videos available on the mobile site.
While this suddenly opened up the possibility to access videos on the go, said Youtube, the site itself, mobile browsers and the hardware had limitations that prevented the mobile experience from keeping up with YouTube on the desktop.
In the announcement of the roll-out of an updated version of the mobile site YouTube mentioned the following new features:
1. A faster mobile site.
2. The user interface incorporates larger, more touch-friendly elements, making it easier to access videos on the go.
3. It incorporates the features and functionality you’ve come to expect from the Youtube.com site, like search query suggestions, the options to create playlists, and the ability to designate “favourite,” “like” or “unlike” videos directly from your device.
4. As YouTube makes improvements to Youtube.com, they say that you’ll see them quickly follow in the mobile site. Some recent updates since the US launch are support across more platforms and more social sharing features from the YouTube Mobile site (Facebook, Twitter and Buzz). Native apps aren’t updated as frequently, says YouTube.
Today some of the countries consuming the most YouTube videos on mobiles include the UK, Japan and Mexico, YouTube stated. Meanwhile, South Africans have also revealed a real appetite for watching video content on the go, with mobile YouTube consumption increasing by 150% year on year.
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