YouTube Phenomenon: Thinking Locally to Be Global

YouTube is a real phenomenon.

While competitors form their own audiences and fan communities, YouTube remains the place where everyone can find, distribute, and make online video. But how does this site for public viewing video continue to dominate the competitive field?
')
In the ten years since launch, YouTube has grown from a single video portal, youtube.com, to dozens of localized portals. The entire company — from Youtube-Australia to YouTube-Japan — tailors its language, culture and taste suggestions to audiences around the world.

Recently, YouTube announced the addition of new countries to the localization program. The American company now speaks the same language with users in Bulgaria, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Belarus. This increases the total number of localized versions of YouTube to 85, and this is not all additional language features!

But how did YouTube come to this? And in what direction will the company move on?

At Alconost, we have translated for you a publication about the company's ten-year expansion into local markets and what its next steps will be.

2005: The Beginning

In the beginning was YouTube.com ... and that’s it.

Despite the availability around the world (almost), the site focused mainly on the United States and the English-language video. And although YouTube quickly realized that their product would enjoy worldwide popularity, the transition to localized platforms did not start until the monetization method was determined.

However, after Google acquired the site at the end of 2006, it was not long before local versions of YouTube. After all, if you can use Google search on a local search engine and Google services in your own language, why not offer a local version of YouTube?

Mid 2007: Early Launch

In June 2007, YouTube launched its first local sites.

How were countries selected for launch? By a combination of the volume of potential markets and languages.

YouTube offered its own local sites to most of the major markets in Europe, as well as Brazil and Japan. Only one large European market was left unattended - the German-speaking audience: Germany, being the continent’s largest consumer market, was completely excluded from early localization.

What's interesting: the UK and Ireland received local versions of YouTube, while visitors from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand — another three major English-speaking countries — were redirected to the original US site.

End 2007: Launch continues

These English-speaking markets did not have to wait long.

Australia, Canada and New Zealand received local YouTube portals by the end of the year, but a much bigger event was the decision of YouTube to offer its services in two other main languages ​​- to reach Russia and Germany. Along with the recent local launch of YouTube in Mexico, these markets have provided an influx of users looking for video content, as well as creative and financial resources for the successful development of the YouTube platform.

By the end of 2007, YouTube secured a strong presence in North America, Eastern and Central Europe and Oceania, as well as a limited presence in the former USSR, East Asia and South America. As before, the company could not provide localized services to consumers in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

2008: Slow but sure

In 2008, YouTube focused on localization for countries such as South Korea, India, Israel, Sweden and the Czech Republic. Despite the relatively small scale, this step was of serious strategic importance.

The emergence of a local YouTube for South Korea led to the development of a very distinctive online culture in East Asia, opening up the company's second largest market in this part of the world after early localization for Japan.

Entry into the Indian market opened the door to a promising tech-savvy culture and added more than a billion South Asian users to the portal for the first time in YouTube’s history.

Israel also became for YouTube the first - the first local site in the Middle East and the first site in a language that is read from right to left and not from left to right, as it has been in all other local markets so far.

In the Czech Republic, in one of the smallest markets that owns YouTube, Google had to face stiff competition from the Czech company Seznam. In this light, the provision of a Czech-oriented portal in Czech language was of strategic importance for Mountain View, and the Czech Republic gained early access to Google’s national language and culture-oriented products before its neighbors in the Central European region.

And then ... two years nothing happened.

2010: Penetration to Africa, plus Argentina

In 2010, YouTube made its first foray into South America after an early entry into the Brazilian market in 2007. With the addition of Argentina, for the first time, YouTube took up localization in the dominant language on this continent - Spanish (as opposed to the Portuguese portal for Brazil).

In the same year, the first African portal for South Africa appeared. The continent’s leading economy, South Africa was the obvious choice for YouTube’s expansion in the region and a good start to courting a billion African Internet users.

2011: The Arab World and the Seizure of Africa

In the first half of 2011, YouTube launched its Arab portals. Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Tunisia - they all got their local YouTube portals as the company made serious efforts to reach the Middle East and North Africa.

Expanding its reach in Africa, which was launched a year earlier by the South African portal, YouTube has conquered one of the largest and richest markets in Tropical Africa, which includes Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.

In addition, Google has opened local portals in Southeast Asia (Singapore and the Philippines), Europe (Belgium) and South America (Colombia).

2012: Peripheral Expansion

YouTube started to promote its localization project in the periphery in 2012, expanding to post-Soviet territory (Ukraine), border countries of Europe and the Middle East (Greece, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates), as well as East Africa (Senegal and Ghana).

There was also a deepening in Southeast Asia: YouTube localized sites for Malaysia and Indonesia, and subsequently for the countries of South America (Chile and Peru).

By the time the Ukrainian portal was launched in mid-December, the company had already localized offers for most of the main markets in the world. China (for regulatory reasons), Central Asia and Tropical Africa, as well as several significant but small European markets, remained noticeable white spots on YouTube’s local presence map.

In 2013, these European markets will get a little more attention.

2013: European achievements

In 2013, Google took up the development of local portals for almost all other small countries in Europe. Within a few months, local YouTube portals were launched for Denmark, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Romania, Portugal and Slovakia. While the Baltics and the Balkans remained ignored (with a few exceptions), the main free market economies of Europe have already gained the opportunity to use their national YouTube portals.

In the same year, the national YouTube portals opened in the Middle East in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Despite the fact that none of these markets were among the main ones from the point of view of the population or the audience, local residents appreciated the opportunity to use local versions of YouTube. With the fact that Arab portals have already been launched, this expansion was important for YouTube and consolidated the company's position on the video streaming market in the region.

2014: the Baltics, the Balkans and Southeast Asia

If 2013 was devoted to the main markets of Europe, then 2014 was the replenishment of the portfolio of local sites with countries that were previously overlooked. Local portals were developed for all the Baltic countries and the Balkans, and - with the exception of dictatorial Belarus and a number of tiny states like Liechtenstein, Andorra and the Holy See - Europe as a whole gained access to YouTube through national portals.

Outside Europe, YouTube has opened national portals in Thailand, Vietnam and Lebanon, consolidating its position in the Middle Eastern and southeastern markets.

2015: already 85

During the latest expansion, YouTube advanced to the Caucasus (Azerbaijan and Georgia) and first entered Central Asia. The Kazakh portal allowed the company to reach a growing number of Central Asian Internet users and consumers of a multimedia product, albeit with limited access due to geographic vastness (with low demographic density) of the Kazakh market.

YouTube also completed its main campaign in Europe with the launch of the Belarusian portal. Not new to the provision of services in states under the control of dictators, YouTube has filled the last noticeable gap on the European continent using a national portal, although its content is still largely influenced by a powerful geographical and cultural proximity to Russia.

YouTube's next steps

The three zones for which localized YouTube portals are still not there, but they certainly should appear, are easy to determine. The reason for the discussion is rather how easy the company will be able to carry out this localization.

China

China is the most obvious gap in YouTube’s strategy today, but it’s not easy for companies to deal with it. Censorship of the Chinese Communist Party restricts access to YouTube from IP addresses located in mainland China. As long as Chinese Internet users cannot search and watch videos without an excessive amount of problems, government requirements mean that Google (or Alphabet )’s efforts to create a localized version of its video portal for the country will not bear fruit.
Prospects: unlikely

Central and Southeast Asia

By expanding localization projects into the Caucasus and Kazakhstan, YouTube gave a clear message of intent to expand to Central and South-East Asia. The latest political trends in Iran, of course, will simplify the conquest of this youth-saturated market, and expansion to other “countries” in Central Asia should go relatively smoothly if the Kazakh experiment proves successful. In these regions, YouTube is unlikely to face the same level of regulatory resistance that China would have to overcome; In addition, there is reason to believe that the Central Asian states (even Mongolia) will welcome the attention of Mountain View.
Prospects: probably

Tropical Africa

By providing most of the developing world with localized portals, YouTube is indeed lagging far behind Tropical Africa. There are worthy opportunities for expansion into the region, and the western and central parts of the African continent may become the company's likely targets in the near future. In fact, expansion to West Africa can be considered the next goal of YouTube, given the foundation laid earlier by the portals for Ghana and Senegal.
Prospects: very likely

Conclusion

Over the past decade, YouTube has launched a large-scale localization program. The company has developed 85 local and national video distribution portals, adapting the experience of using video content to users all over the world.

And although there are still significant parts of the world with a large number of Internet users ignored by YouTube, it is very likely that everyone - except China - will soon have access to the most popular video portal through national sites. And this time you can be sure: it will not take another ten years from YouTube.

It doesn’t matter if your project is as ambitious as YouTube, or if you want to do localization in just one or two languages ​​- professional translators at Alconost are ready to help you with this. We have experience with large-scale localizations: for example, we translated the Jooble service site into 16 languages, and the Xsolla payment services localized into 18 languages ​​at once. In general, we translate more than 60 languages, so we will be happy to work for you!

Read more: https://alconost.com