YouTube Adds 7 More Local Versions of Site, Brings Total to 85
While Netflix gets a lot of attention for creating international versions of its site, YouTube is far outpacing it. The leading online video destination announced yesterday that it has created local versions for viewers in the Adriatics, Baltics, Bulgaria, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. In total, YouTube now has local versions for 85 countries.
In the announcement blog post, Marenco Kemp, YouTube's head of EMEA online partnerships, points out that local versions help with search and discovery. Video creators can find a following, become partners with YouTube, and start making money from their channels.
For viewers, local versions help surface videos and video creators from their region. Kemp notes, for example, that popular local talent like DynastyofCat and TheSevenChannel are able to get homepage placement thanks to local versions.
YouTube is already helping locally popular artists in those regions find an audience. The post points out that Grand Production, a Serbian folk music channel, has followers throughout the Balkans, and 17-year-old Dima Ermuzevich has a following of over 400,000.
While YouTube is based in the United States, its traffic is global. The company notes that over 80 percent of the billions of video views it serves each day are to viewers outside the U.S.
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