YouTube announced today that it would localize its service in France, Spain, Italy, Holland, France, Brazil, Poland and Japan, as well as the UK and Ireland. Although most of the media is praising this move as smart which I think it is, they might be some downside to this. Logically speaking, YouTube being the giant that it is would be able to effectively curb the growth of local video sharing sites and also at the same time grow its own subscriber base which is all good.
However I tend to look at things slightly differently. The idea might be great, what is required now is execution. Doing it wrong and the downside is on top of spreading your resources thin, you also diversify your own target market.
Say if I am from Japan, most people would think “I only want to browse You-Tube content applicable in Japanese”. Not exactly so if you ask me. I believe there is a sizable group who actually crave something new and fresh and foreign to their culture.
I profess I have not visited any of the regional sites yet and those sites could well just be a language frontend. You can then add tabs for searching local or worldwide etc
