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YouTube Goes International
Bizzeh writes "YouTube has announced that they plan to go international. The video site, owned by Google, has launched nine country-specific versions across Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK. The BBC reports: 'YouTube is now stressing its credentials as a platform not just for user-generated content but also for professional broadcaster and advertisers. The company says it has more than 1,000 global partners, with more than 150 deals signed in Europe since March. [Chad Hurley, YouTube co-founder] said: "We respect copyright and we want to create new revenue streams to create opportunities. "We have been working with rights holders to help them leverage new audiences."'"
Interesting that they left out a German version. After all, there way much more Germans than Dutchmen.
bash$
Well-known examples of producer-specific channels include BBC, NBA, and Al Jazeera.
So major content providers are partnering with YouTube, but their YouTube videos are essentially DRM-free (they can still be downloaded like normal youtube videos can). So are content providers starting to care less about DRM now? Or since most of them are putting teaser promotional videos up, not full-length content, they don't worry so much if the short snippets are copied elsewhere?
can the PornoTube be far behind?
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
It is noteworthy that they felt they had to stress the fact that they respect the law, in this case copyright law, isn't it?
However, what it really means is 'We want to squeeze as much money out of this as we can' - they probably have a close partnership with the RIAA on this.
That's curious... considering China is a larger market than all of Europe, you'd think that a Chinese YuTube would be their first move. I wonder what the reason could be for ignoring the largest market of all?
Can someone please explain to me why Google bought YouTube, merged the search results for the two sites, etc. but still hasn't ported over some of the nicer features of the video.google.com player?
Doesn't it make sense to merge the best features of the two sites and the two players?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
While the article states that the site text has been translated into various languages, the video itself remains unchanged. What is really needed is a viable multi-language subtitlng solution for online video.
I'm too lazy to look up who owns the patents to see why Google/YouTube is NOT doing this... Anyone care to do a little research on that?
... an dumped the idea of a german version.
;)
Next: the great german firewall, build by american companies unable to understand foreign rules and laws...
This is amazing. At last the international world can explore the wonderful technology that has brought together so many, using an effective comment and rating system to ensure that each video posted is as high quality as the last (the infallible "5 star system").
No but seriously, YouTube is like a cesspool. There is no quality control for comments. There are no moderators who bann idiots who do stuff like chain letters and spamvertising their own videos. People are now using videos of themselves talking for what the comment box was supposed to originally be. And this is not just the fault of the stupid users on youtube. The limited size of the comment box and the ease of posting comments is all their issues.
Lets not ignore the fact that people are trying to make this like a second my-space. I'm tired of getting e-mails from people who just want to say "hi" to me over and over again for no god-damned reason. Its nice and all, but its not a "comment" or appropriate "message". Your not telling me what I can do to make better videos. Your not critiquing my videos or even asking me what the source of my video files are (to which I usually reply "it costs money" and never hear from you again).
Furthermore, the lack of quality control of videos (I'll just say it: reposts) and lack of meta-tag control is absurd. I see people copying-and-pasting lists of every anime ever created (or at least most of them) followed by every number from 1 to 400 to ensure there SLIDE SHOW OF GOOGLED IMAGES can be found. 90% of the "anime music videos" on the bloody site are either slideshows that don't even match the beat of the music or use a single image size for consistency, or else videos copied and pasted from AMV.org.
Lets not forget the flagging system. With this wonderful system, even the most innocent of videos can be tagged as inappropriate, nevermind that it was tagged simply because its a "rival video" of another creator...
This isn't even looking at the fact every video uploaded on youtube ends up having lower quality then an AVI washed through windows-movie maker with the default render settings.
I'll stick to Crunchy Roll and Stage6 for now, thank you very much.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
From the article: "It's not just about translating, it also about creating content unique to certain countries."
This is marketing double-speak for 'we want to restrict certain users from accessing certain content.' It'll start with pressure from commercial organisations (MPAA, TV networks, etc) and gradually move towards yielding to government pressure - as we've already seen with Google's search engine censorship antics. Anyone in China want to see footage of Tiananmen square? Forget it. It's not in Google's best commercial interests.
In future you will see only what Google wants you to see. With its increasing dominance of both access to web content and content itself, Google is becoming the new global censor, answerable to no-one but its shareholders. This is very, very scary
Hmm, it seems to me that the current page is international, because it is intended for use in any country. A page made specifically for one country would then be national
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Why the hell do totally nothing wog countries like Brazil and Poland get versions and an important country like Australia is snubbed? Fucking political correctness bollocks!
Does this mean that the Japanese are going to start paying attention to all the copyrighted anime, game shows, talk shows and dramas people have put on there?
:P
Damn internationalization is going to ruin my interweb.
YouTube accounts for 10% of Internet traffic. Imagine that. That's more than milions of other site do, combined.
And they built that entirely on venture capital (until they got bought by google).
I read all the time about competing video sites bragging about their high def videos - could they possibly sustain the video playback count of YouTube with such high bandwidth videos? I really doubt that. And no wonder YouTube stays low quality as well.
I just checked out a couple of the new YouTube sites (Brazil and France). I tried a few searches on those plus the U.S. site, in English, Portuguese, and French, and it returned the exact same videos regardless of which site is used. Basically, it looks like the same exact damn site, only with instructions and links translated into the appropriate language. I guess that's the extent of "country-specific" content.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
you know you want it
fuck karma, I like saying the truth better
What amazes me is that they can successfully pitch this as a professional-quality product despite the fact that the quality of the video and audio is so bad it's almost unwatchable. It's a weird time in video -- on one hand everyone is up in arms about hi-def DVDs and HDTV, and on the other hand people are running around watching over-compressed clips on a 2" low-res cellphone screen.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Not only do we respect copyright, but we respectfully ignore them!
Kids thirteen and under (or thereabouts) loved YouTube because of the awful, chopped-up anime episodes (and parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 thereof). Now, all that is gone the way of the dodo, leaving a generation of pre-teens surprised, fuming, narrow-eyed and political.
YouTube's cachet has just evaporated among a few hundred thousand neo movers and shakers, making it the next mortally-wounded Napster. Maybe that was "We Do No Evil" Google's plan from the start? AWTTW: Kids are smarter than you think, and formative memories last forever.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Maybe they haven't translated it yet, but it's there.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks