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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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Why thank you, that was very kind :)
The truth is that all Swedes know how to read English backwards and forwards. In the swedish school-system there are three subjects that are the most basic ones, the ones that everyone has to pass in, math, Swedish and English. We start to learn English at age 9 and then never stop until we finish high school. Along with the fact that the vast majority of movies and tv-shows are undubbed American programs, this makes us very proficient. This is especially true for people below the age of thirty, almost all of whom can understand English perfectly (if not always being able to speak it very well).
However, I would say that I am above average due to the fact that I went to an English high school in Stockholm where all subjects where taught in English (except Swedish, of course). So yes, it is certainly true that I tend to prefer international English sites over Swedish ones. Still, I have a number of friends that arn't as good as me that are completely addicted to YouTube, and they've never mentioned Bubblare.se. I realise that this isn't the largest statistical sample, but based on this I seriously doubt that the site is as big as they claim. Totally unscientific, I know, but I can say that they haven't achieved that most coveted of honors, that of being a meme. YouTube however, certainly has.