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Swedish Video Site Trouncing YouTube
paulraps writes "Why should a video that's funny in Shanghai be funny in Stockholm? That's the explanation for why Bubblare.se, a Swedish competitor to YouTube, is getting around 30 times as many viewers for its Scandinavian video clips as the American market leader. 'Local beats global,' in this market, says managing director Oskar Kalmaru." Luckily for YouTube, the local YouTube-like site around here is YouTube itself.
I would have never thought that a site which copied another site's idea but translated it for a local market would do better than a site not designed for that market.
Whats funny is YouTube already localizes. If you check google trends you will see that youtube gets most of its hits from asia, and not the US. And if you start to look you will see plenty of non english content on YouTube. I would even bet that YouTube may set its default top videos based upon your location. There is nothing on YouTube to stop you from seeing videos on other sites, but the fact that it can store so MANY videos means that as long as its recommendations and searches are localized, there is no need to localize that actual content.
...the local school board is more fully aware of issues plaguing local schools than the US Department of Education.
This message printed on 100% post-consumer recycled electrons.
In TFA, Kalmaru says the opposite of what the article said, "What's funny in Shanghai isn't necessarily funny in Borås." Maybe it was a typo, maybe not.
Still, I think Kalmaru's generalization is a hasty one to make. Here's one tried-and-true example to the contrary, where it's just as funny even if you don't sprechen any Deutsch.
Given the amount of crap on Youtube I think he has a point!
From my many, many hours spent wasting time on youtube I would honestly declare that at least half the clips on Youtube must be of chubby American wanna-be-famous kids looking like idiots while they dance around infront of their webcam to pop songs.
One specifically for Great Britain would be great. It's very annoying to go to YouTube to search for a particular band's music video, but then only end up with pages after pages of those stupid anime music videos. You know, the ones where people take a song, and then make a video by combining the song with clips from various anime shows and series. I wish there was some way to filter such anime videos out, as I want to watch the actual music video, not some shitty Japanese animation mashup. If a local UK site would limit such anime videos, I'd be an instant user.
Really! Don't miss it.
It starts out seeming to be a discussion of goat husbandry, how to feed
them, all that good stuff. But there's a kicker. And totally safe for
work and kids of all ages. And best: no subtle sarcasm or fake bedroom singing.
Much better than youtube.
I have always thought that success of YouTube and MySpace is directly linked to the users of US and it is a ticking clock.
At some point the market will be saturated here and as far as I know people in Europe either despise or don't care about Myspace. Now Youtube is certainly a different story and I do use them fairly often but they need to change their model.
Unfortunately I don't think that localizing their own service will really help because services like YouTube especially for audiences in Europe is based a large part on viral marketing. Without the word of mouth aspect they wouldn't be as big as they are and they simply don't have the word of mouth going for them abroad.
If they were smart they would buy this company and make it a YouTube network. Built off the YouTube bandwith and infrastructure running YouTube software but localized and started by a local company. Now that would work well to scale the YouTube model.
Software Defined RFID - The Rifidi Emulator
No, the summary is simply leaving out an intermediate conclusion. It should say:
Why should what's funny in Shanghai be funny in Stockholm?
It isn't [necessarily].
That's why a local alernative is more funny than the global Youtube.
It took me a minute to understand it, too. Probably lost in translation.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
This is great! I was getting tired of the limited selection of Swedish cooking shows on Youtube.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
This localization nonsense may make sense to swedes, but it won't cut it with any English speaking audience.
Of COURSE we find different cultures interesting and funny. It's the world-wide-web, remember? A lot of Americans watch the crazy Asian clips and a whole load of latinos watch the scantily clad white girls, even if they don't speak the same language. Why this segregative midset? It's refreshing to see what people everywhere are doing. You can watch a German playing a guitar, a hick from Wisonsin talking about her dirty habits and a fight in the Hong-Kong subway all in the same place. What's wrong with that?
If you only want to meet local people, try the nearest pub you freaks!
[joking]
Regardless of that, well established beats both. This isn't as rock-paper-scissors as you might think.
Do they have lots of swedish pr0n there?
"Why should a Grand Slam breakfast special made for the national market be popular in New Jersey? That's the explanation for why the Deptford Diner, a New Jersey local competitor to Denny's, is getting around 30 times more customers for its breakfast special as the American market leader. 'Local beats national,' in this market, says waitress Maude Stevens."
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The greatest feature of the internet is it international content. When i want some local news/videos/music, there it is. If I want to find some international stuff, see, whats up in other countries, I find it also there. So should we divide to different places? Do you like checking 20 different sites for 20 different countries? I don't and i like to see movies on youtube, that are international. Related stuff from other countries. Contents from other countries can be interesting too.
Couldn't they have picked a better name? Everytime I hear/see YouTube I think of tubgirl :(
In other news, DVDs are kicking the crap out of YouTube*.
*inside my house
Since when is Slashdot American/British? All these years I've been a dirty foreigner who's just visiting.
Bashing YouTube stories lately?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I'm Swedish (I'm even called Oskar!) and I've never even heard of this site. YouTube however, I've visited many, many times. Many of my friends use it, and I've never heard any of them ever mention Bubblare.se. Don't put too much stock in this article, is what I'm saying.
My Swedish is not very good, but here are some translations of some of the phrases to help you navigate:
Hem - Home
Logga In - Log in
Mest Sedda - Most viewed
Populära filmklipp - Popular film clips
Zappa Fram Klipp - Film Clips from (Frank) Zappa - he's big in Sweden
Pepsi Girl - Pepsi Girl
Titta Pa Filmklipp - Filmclip of Papa's tits
Ladda Up - Lather Up
As long as the servers are fast and the local lingo is supported, I don't really see why a international company's offering would be any worse than a local's.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
But what good are thumbnails when a search returns 100 matches for shitty anime mashup videos, and only one or two matches for the actual video being searched for (which is listed after about 70 of the anime videos)? The problem is with the searching.
I want to be able to have the search ignore all anime videos in the first place. I don't want to see the thumbnails, let alone the videos themselves. A localized YouTube variant that minimizes such content would be very useful in this regard. I think one from the UK would be good, as anime is generally looked down upon in our culture. Many in the UK don't see it as an artform, but rather as lousy, foreign animations.
is funny in any language. Whether he's an american or an asian.
Jeez, why aren't Swedish videos like this one more popular worldwide? I don't know, I just can't figure it out.
--
RumorsDaily
Ever seen Takeshis castle?
s tle&hl=en
It's a japanese game show-- I first saw in Slovakia, that was briefly aired in the US as MXC or something, but horribly edited and sliced up-
that I now watch on google video, where whole length epsiodes are available and most of them are from a network in spain...
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=takeshis+ca
no- there is no international humor there...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
you gotta understand, Denny's DON'T DO SCRAPPLE!
I'm from the west coast, and until 18 never had a cheesteak or scrapple, but I've asked for scrapple in Denny's- and decided to go somewhere else next time for just that lack..
(p.s. scrapple is disgusting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapple
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
And NOW they have no bandwidth. Ahh, Slashdot, you never fail.
Bubble Arse? Is it really called Bubble Arse?
Just interesting.
OK, all you Chinese people - is that funny or what?
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
So, like, that's what this site should be worth, right?
3 3
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/22/12212
Damn those opportunistic Swedes....
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
The site is Slashdotted by American nerds hoping to see naked Swedes.
Say what you will about youtube, they do have rock solid servers.
The article is phrased ambiguously: "Bubblare.se has up to 30 times more viewers for Scandinavian film clips". The implication is that Bubblare, showing only Scandinavian film clips, has 30 times as many viewers as YouTube does for everything. But that's not it: it's just saying that for Scandinavian viewers, local beats global. In fact, it could well be that Scandinavians spend more time watching YouTube non-Scandinavian clips than Scandinavian clips from Bubblare.
It just means that a targeted site sells more of the targeted stuff than the superstore to the target audience. It doesn't mean that the superstore doesn't sell more, even of the targeted stuff, to the global audience.
That's not uninteresting; one would think that there's no reason for anything on Bubblare not to also be on YouTube, for the whole world to enjoy and for Scandinavian viewers to stumble to other contexts.
Maybe they just enjoy having the whole site localized in their language. Maybe the bandwidth is better because it's all local. Or perhaps being under the radar it doesn't get quite the array of crud.
None of which supports the idea that YouTube is going anywhere.
Its actually called a "bubble" (more or less) - talk about a bright future!
The Sveedes to everything better than the USA.
....Swedish Humor doesn't translate well into English. WTF was that?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Who would want to compete for a business that has huge expenses and no income?
And I thought they ment TPB...
There is a French competitor of youtube as well, called DailyMotion (available in several languages)
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
Nope. The operative word here is necessarily. In logic terms, he's saying "Not all P are Q", or "Some P are not Q"
The summary "Why should.." is basically saying "Is it so that all P are Q?". It's not the opposite, it's just his statement rephrased as a (rhetorical) question.
Your statement is (and demonstrates) "Some P are Q" - which doesn't contradict "Some P are not Q".
Naw, not likely lost in translation.
:)
The word "necessarily" has a direct counterpart in Swedish as "nödvändigtvis".
They're as good a word-pair as you can get for translation, really. Both have the same meanings, are the most common word for that idea and carry the same weight and connotations. They're used in the exact same sentences, too.
For instance, the most common usages in both languages are:
"A är inte nödvändigtvis B" = "A is not neccessarily B".
The same sentence structure and everything, but more importantly, both languages typically put a negation in front and say "not neccessarily". The non-negated form "A is necessarily B" has connotations of formality and logical rigidity in English, or even appear a bit strange since it's such an uncommon usage. That's exactly the same in Swedish.
Jeez, I sure can write a lot about such a simple thing
Apparently not exactly the same. Google gives 3x more hits for the non-negated form in English but 8x more hits for the non-negated form in Swedish. So there's a little difference there.
:)
And just for fun, here's some word meaning for "nödvändigtvis"
"nöd" = cognate of "need". (In modern Swedish, means "emergency" or "great need" when written alone)
"vänd" = cognate of "wend", "to go about" (Mod. Swe: "turn")
"-ig" = turns a noun into an adjective, "having the property of the noun" equivalent is "-ish" in English.
So we have:
"nödvändig" = "necessary" or broken down "having the property of needed-to-go-about" (or "needwendish" if English had remained true to it's origins.)
"vis" = Cognate of "wise" and with the same meanings. In this case it's being used in the sense "in the manner of" (although modern English is informally using it as "with respect to", when applied as a suffix.)
So in fully expanded form "nödvändigtvis" is
"in the manner of having the property of being needed to go about something"
In psuedo-English: "needwendishwise" in real German: "notwendigerweise".
Actually it's interesting to wonder if you could call that pseudo-English. It's composed of valid English words combined in a way consistent with how most English words are formed. OTOH, even if you can decompose the word doesn't always mean you understand the meaning of it. Look how many people don't understand what "Wherefore" means in "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?".
(It means Why.)