YouTube will launch nine country specific versions of YouTube today.
YouTube local versions will be available for Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the U.K, complete with relative country specific domains such as youtube.fr and youtube.jp.
The new sites include fully translated site content and will eventually deliver country specific popular content.
The new sites will be provided as an option to all YouTube users, although YouTube will be encouraging local users to switch by offering them direct links to local versions.
YouTube’s broadcast partners in the rollout countries include the BBC, France 24, the Spanish Antena 3 and Cuatro TV, the Portuguese RTP, the Dutch VPRO and NPO, along with a number of Football (Soccer Clubs) and not-for-profit organizations.
The only thing remarkable about the move to provide localized versions of YouTube is the fact that it hadn’t been done before. YouTube has been phenomenally successful to date; opening up the site to a non-English speaking audience will drive a new wave of growth that will further cement YouTube’s place as the leading online destination for on-demand internet video.
I also think this move may crush a few local video sites in some of these countries that so far had modest success but still had the language advantage. Now they’ll need to look for other differentiating factors, that may or may not be enough for their survival. We’ll see if YouTube will pull it out on its own, or it has to go the eBay way.
This is a great move from youtube. We usually take for sure that people speak english. It’s not true and this is a wise way to reach a wider audience worldwide. The new mobile youtube service will surely help as well.
RBA
I’m seeing it more as a Google style move, Google has local versions is something like 100 odd countries, YouTube is following suit, it’s often overlooked that much of Google’s dominance came outside of the United States first.
The german version (YouTube.de) should be following soon. Google is in negotiations with the GEMA (Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights).
This move was definitely motivated from the great success that Dailymotion is having with a multilingual site, especially in Europe.
Dailymotion is attracting more and more viewers all the time (according to Alexa).
Why isn’t there a Canadian version?
Honestly in search it makes sense to have many data centers everywhere! – it ensures speed; and Also assures someone can’t game the whole system.
– IE; In Oklahoma all my sites rank better than when a friend searches is WA
Don’t worry Jordan, there will be a Canadian one for the rest of us soon enough… in the meantime, North America will continue to be USA even though land wise, we are bigger yet culturally (economically etc), they dominate.
Jon
They have now focused on the global picture, which is a pretty good move provided that not all of the people on the web are fluent in English.
The idea has already be done with Metacafe (local versions).
Youtube has copied them especially with AJAX features.
If you run startup… you have write it too.
It was time for such a move.
Can someone tell them that putting a mushy gold colour in place of the (correct) orange stripe in the Irish flag is extremely offensive?
YouTube was much better when it was a single international site, it made it fit into Marshall McLuhan’s vision of a global village. As someone in the United States I like to see what the most popular videos are in Japan without switching my preferences to Japanese.
In fact one has to wonder if the next step would be to block someone in the United States from viewing content from another nation or vise versa. In fact if you look at Flickr censorship for German users you have to wonder if YouTube will follow their lead.
I wonder if this move is going to be buying out local competition or self-made new identities? I know in Romania for example, the website http://www.tilulilu.ro offers lots more features than youtube itself, trust me: not only videos can be uploaded, but images, audio files, etc. great tool.
sorry, the correct address of the site is http://www.trilulilu.ro
The correct URL of the romanian youtube competitor is http://www.trilulilu.ro , sorry for the previous error post.
Are there any insight on when Local YouTube will be launched in the Nordic Region??