YouTube To Launch India Site On May 7th
ContentSutra has learned from various sources that YouTube is planning to launch an India site on the 7th of May. Apparently, as with all things Google (NSDQ: GOOG), this has been a closely guarded secret, and we have contacted Google for an official comment. We’re trying to get more details, but from what we’ve heard, multiple content partners will be present at the launch.
Readers will remember that there had been reports of an India site from YouTube in October last year; following that, one of our readers had informed us that the company had bought the YouTube.in and YouTube.co.in domain for around Rs. 2.44 lakhs, as per India’s official domain registry. YouTube has been fighting a legal battle in the Indian courts against major music publisher T-Series for a while now, and I wonder how the launch of an India site will change things. More as we have it.
With the launch of YouTube India, what do you think will happen to the multiple YouTube clones in India – Meravideo.com, thebig.tv, aapkavideo, videodubba, metubes, videochutney and dekhona?
i dont see how the launch of the Indian site is going to change anything , and this is something which i had mentioned on your last write up about this as well.
There are enough 'indians's already surfing, uploading and downloading on you tube, how does an Indian specific site help out…
Yeah, I agree with puchoo's take. It shouldn't change the status quo, especially since the status quo is the current Indian video consumer heading to YouTube anyway.
Just to clarify — I meant the wannabes are even more doomed.
My 2 cents, country specific site from Google means serving request from different server farm, localized UI etc..
chetan – if that's the case, then their servers will effectively come under India jurisdiction. that's not necessarily a good thing for them
Well as they say, it would be to target content producers, TV shows as well as amateur artists who want to gain exposure …ultimately its all ad dollars…monetization…
Nikil,
In addition to to the YouTube clones you mentioned, there are thousands of India specific sites using youtube API, including ours.
(http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/overview.html)
When used the older API, we had an avg of 15,000 page views a day.
We now use the new api , which has an option to exclude restricted content as flagged by the community, our traffic has reduced to 500 page views a day.
Google/YouTube has to be very careful about including the restricted contents, when they launch youtube.co.in & .in
Hi Ravi,
just saw moviesindia. noticed that the link to smashits.com in the footer is ww.smashits.com, not http://www.smashits.com . maybe you'd like to correct that.
so, from your experience, it's the restricted content that is driving the traffic :) YouTube is partnering with content providers, so lets see how that goes.
Hi Ravi Venkatraman !
If obscene language – sorry cannot give example – is to be excluded, page views would reduce to small fraction. You Tube should be requested to rip out the offending comments and not the videos.
"so, from your experience, it’s the restricted content that is driving the traffic"
Exercising their liberty, so many people have trashed most videos with obscene offensinve comments. If that makes video itself (even religious) restricted, then hardly any videos are left open. I do not feel that explicit videos are driving traffic.