YouTube expands international horizons with multi-lingual, localized websites
Local versions of YouTube are now available in Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK. “Today’s announcement is a first step towards fully localized sites in each of the 9 countries,” YouTube co-founder Steve Chen told a news conference in Paris.
First-stage rollout
As part of this first-stage rollout, each respective site is fully translated, with local homepages and search functions. Over time, each local site will benefit from an entirely “local” experience that will allow for country-specific video rankings and comments, as well as Video, Channel, Categories and Community sections.
A German version should become operational soon as well, and site offerings are to be extended to other countries.
"YouTube will now be more accessible and interesting to a worldwide audience, and we look forward to rolling out in other countries in the months to come," Chad Hurley, YouTube's other co-founder, said in a statement.
“Video is universal and allows people around the world to communicate and exchange ideas. With our announcement today we are expanding upon our already global platform to make it even more relevant for our local communities,” said Hurley.
“YouTube will now be more accessible and interesting to a worldwide audience, and we look forward to rolling out in other countries in the months to come.”
"From the beginning, we have been totally focused on creating an incredible YouTube user experience and service," said Chen.
"We're really excited to now offer that same great service to a global community, by bringing them local sites that not only promote their communities but speak their language."
YouTube, acquired by the US search engine Google in October last year, said it had signed partnership agreements with international content providers such as the BBC, the French all news channel France 24 and the French public-service television company France Televisions, and with the Spanish channels Antena 3 and Cuatro TV.
Deals have also been reached with European soccer clubs Chelsea, AC Milan, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Additional contributors are non-profit organisations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, UNHCR, and Medecins du Monde (Doctors without Borders), the statement said.
Sakina Arsiwala, in charge of YouTube's international operation, said users in the nine new countries would now have access to worldwide content with locally adapted technical support.
Ahead of the competition
Google is building up its presence in Europe, where it is already well ahead of competitors Microsoft and Yahoo!
In France, YouTube, which currently functions in English, had 20.2 per cent of the video-sharing market in April compared with 19.6 per cent for a rival internet site, Dailymotion.
YouTube has provoked the wrath of some European sports bodies that have filed lawsuits against the service.
The Premier League, which runs England's top football division, sued YouTube in May, charging it with "knowingly misappropriating and exploiting this valuable property" by encouraging footage to be viewed on its site.
Francois Quideau, director of communication for the French football league LFP, said it had joined the action because of first division matches being shown on the site illegally.
The French Tennis Federation FFT owns television rights for matches at the French Open and has also complained about the same problem.
Youtube has shown tremendous growth since its launch in February 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.
According to the latest Alexa statistics YouTube is the fourth most popular website in the world after Yahoo, MSN and Google.
Nielsen//NetRatings’ research shows that YouTube served 72.4 million pages to 19.6 million visitors in June 2006. This equates to a 297% increase in unique visitors from January 2006 and an increase of 515% in page views from January 2006.
The new sites have launched on the following local domains: www.youtube.com.br, www.youtube.fr, www.youtube.ie, it.youtube.com, www.youtube.jp, www.youtube.nl, www.youtube.pl, www.youtube.es, and www.youtube.co.uk
* Some reporting by AFP
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