AfterDawn: News

YouTube goes global

On Tuesday, the huge social video site YouTube launched nine localized versions of its site to countries around the world. The navigation and functionality of the new sites will be in the countries native language.

Eventually, the local YouTubes hope to offer localized content including featured pages targeted towards the consumers of the countries they are in.



The nine initial countries included are Brazil, Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.

Users in those countries can continue to keep YouTube in English or switch to their language using the menu bar at the top of the page.

Each YouTube will also not only be subdomains of youtube.com, the company in each country except Italy has purchased the domain for their specific country.

Many bloggers and analysts believe that the move was a long time coming. "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," said Duncan Riley of TechCrunch.

Source:
BetaNews

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 19 Jun 2007 18:03

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• 6 comments

• Moomoo2

  Heh. Poor Sony.

  19.6.2007 18:17 #1

• windsong

  Good thing the original founders sold it off while they could.

  19.6.2007 19:41 #2

• mododaz

  Originally posted by windsong:Good thing the original founders sold it off while they could.i wonder what there doing now?????

  20.6.2007 03:00 #3

• georgeluv

  spreading operations around the globe in case america turns out to not be so receptive to your video piracy ways eh youtube?

  20.6.2007 09:46 #4

• sinsaint

  Gah i cant stand all these foreign languages, no offence but when someone American who uploads a video and you get a smart person speaking in Spanish or whatever it just pisses you off, keep it in English or host seperate sites.

  21.6.2007 09:14 #5

• borhan9

  wow i was just reading the article about this that was posted a few days ago and they did not waste anytime. Well done to Youtube.

  21.6.2007 20:40 #6