Talk about a truly global audience: 60 percent of all video views on YouTube come from users who select a language other than English as the site’s display language, a Google spokesperson told us Thursday afternoon.
That data point comes on the heels of an announcement earlier Thursday that YouTube is now available in IsiZulu and Afrikaans, two languages spoken in South Africa. The site is now available in 51 languages total, with YouTube offering a localized experience including an own top-level domain and country-specific video recommendations in 35 countries around the world.
YouTube has previously said that it clocks more than three billion video views every day. This means that at least 1.8 billion of those views come from people whose primary language is not English, no matter whether they reside inside the U.S. or not.
This kind of diversity represents a huge opportunity for YouTube: Premium content services like Netflix and Hulu are subject to contractual restrictions that turn international expansions into a slow-moving process. YouTube on the other hand already has a global audience, and it has begun to monetize a significant part of it. A localized version of YouTube’s partner program is now available in 25 countries.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Horia Varlan.
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