YouTube Now Available In 17 Local Versions

YouTube, the world-famous video sharing site, is expanding quickly to new foreign markets. The popular website unveiled its international expansion plans earlier this year in Paris, where it announced the launch of 9 localized domains in Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Ireland and the UK. In the past few months the Google-owned property has rolled out eight new local versions, totaling 17 localized sites outside the US.

8 new local versions
Half October the Mexican language version was warmly welcomed by the Spanish-speaking community. A couple of days later YouTube co-founder Steve Chen lauched a localized website in Taiwan in Chinese. The first Chinese-language site in Hong Kong was lauched a few days earlier. On October 23 YouTube went down-under, launching YouTube Australia at Fox Studios in Sydney and YouTube New-Zealand the day after. Recent launches this month include: YouTube Canada, Youtube Germany and YouTube Russia.

Each local version of YouTube is fully translated and localized for each country including content (Featured Videos, Director Videos, Promotions), as well as the interfaces, search, user support, and such community features as video ratings, sharing, and content flagging. YouTube’s localized versions makes viewing and creating videos more accessible to non-English speakers around the globe.

Domestic competitors
YouTube now competes with a lot of domestic competitors, such as RuTube and Mail.ru in Russia, MyVideo (owned by Pro7Sat.1 media group), Sevenload and RTL’s Clipfish in Germany, Tudou in China (5 times bigger than YouTube), Hispavista’s Tu.tv, Libero Video in Italy, Brazil’s Videolog, French-based Dailymotion, Dutch video sharing sites Filmpjes and 123video.nl and ofcourse many many others!

Partners
In Russia YouTube has concluded partnership agreements with various Russian content suppliers: 1TV, TNT, STS, 2×2, Luxe.tv and Euronews. In Australia Youtube added a number of local media companies to its partner program: Southern Cross View, Sky News, ABC, Channel 10, Channel 7 and Fairfax Media. Media content partners of YouTube Canada include Sony BMG Canada, the CFL, CBC, CommandN, Dose.ca and Unicef. In Germany some 60 YouTube partners, including local media companies, sports clubs and cultural institutions are providing content. Among them 20th Century Fox, ZDF, Kinowelt, National Geographic, Universal Music, Deutsches Museum, Greenpeace and soccer clubs FC Bayern and VfB Stuttgart. And in Taiwan and Hong Kong China Television Co., Sanlih E-Television Co., Lion Travel Service Co., and Taiwan Broadcasting System partnered with the video-sharing site.

YouTube India coming in 2008
The 18th localization of the YouTube brand is planned in early 2008: India. Shashi Seth, YouTube’s head of monetization, has confirmed to the Hindustan Times that they’re will be an Indian YouTube version very soon. “We plan to launch YouTube India anytime between January and March 2008″ he said exclusively to Indian newspaper. The California-based company already tied up with Eros Entertainment in India, a film production and distribution firm. According to NewTeeVee YouTube faces some legal problems currently in the second most populous country in the world.

YouTube’s international manager, Sakina Arsiwala, aims to eventually launch localized sites “in every country, in every language” she said to Associated Press in Taiwan.

Some interesting YouTube facts are shared by news media around the world. In the Chinapost: “Seven hours [of video content] are uploaded on YouTube every minute”. News.co.au writes: “Nielsen ratings show we have three million Australian visitors a month, which is a significant part of YouTube’s traffic.” Hindustan Times: “India’s contribution to YouTube’s global traffic is less than one per cent”.

Sources: Official Google Blog, CBCNews, Mashable, Variety, Blognation India