Tuesday, June 1, 2010

YouTube Argentina


Youtube is very popular in Argentina. It has two million subscribed users that enter to the site at least once a week. Moreover, 10% of all data traffic in Latin America comes from Argentina. Anyway, there is no local version of the site. This means that youtube.com.ar doesn’t exist. Victoria Grand, head of policy for YouTube, said in an interview with the newspaper La Nacion of Argentina, that Google might launch a local version in 2010. The aim is to include videos with the identity of each place and post public information. Since the site is doing very well in the country, the idea of Google is to expand; to add local advertising and publish content in the home page made by Argentineans. This does not happen, because it is centered in the U.S.

Youtube Argentina may arrive to the country on 20 July, when locals celebrate Friends day, although the date is not yet confirmed. "We are seriously considering a formal launch of YouTube in Argentina," said Grand in the interview.

Youtube expansion in Latin America began with the launch of Youtube in Mexico (http://www.youtube.com/?gl=MX&hl=es-MX). Then the famous video site arrived to Brazil (http://www.youtube.com/?gl=BR&hl=pt), where there are currently 12 million subscribers.

Besides Argentina, the company wants to launch the service in 50 other countries, because 50% of visits of the site come from outside the United States. Youtube has local versions in Brazil, Mexico, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, UK and Spain.

Argentina is among the first countries in the ranking of downloads in Youtube and Spanish is the second most used language on the site, with 11% of all videos. English is the dominant language with 77% of the videos.

YouTube celebrated its 5th birthday. In 2006, the site was bought by Google for U.S. $ 1,650 million. YouTube is now getting 24 hours of video uploaded to its site every minute.

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