Posts Tagged ‘International’

Investors have put some serious volume into investing in Renren, the “Chinese Facebook” over the last three days, seemingly identifying the site as a possible social media growth stock that can ride the coattails of Facebook.  Between January 29th and the end of the 30th, the stock rose from around $4 to a high of [...]

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

Colombia is the latest addition to YouTube’s list of locations, bringing YouTube to a total of 37 localized countries around the world, from Algeria to Yemen.

YouTube may be more diverse than you think. A whopping 60 percent of all video views on YouTube come from non-English speakers.

It looks like things are finally starting to look up for the international online video crowd—Hulu has announced that they are finally going abroad, starting with a launch in Japan later this year.

Rumor has it that Netflix has some new international launches on the horizon. It could be only a matter of time before Netflix is streaming in Britain, Mexico and Brazil.

All you online video viewers in the United States don’t know how good you’ve got it – you’ve got YouTube, Netflix, Ustream, Blip, Vimeo and more and on top of it you’ve got the Holy Grail of television series re-runs – Hulu. What you may not know is that you are the only ones. Outside of the United States we are Hulu deprived.

The collection of languages on YouTube is continuing to expand, with the addition of four new languages today. YouTube users can now surf the video site in Croatian, Filipino, Serbian and Slovak. That brings YouTube Worldwide to a total of 28 different languages, which is an increase of almost 50% from the beginning of the [...]

Yesterday YouTube released a new video to answer users’ questions about YouTube Worldwide, including international policy, captions and subtitles, the international partner program and the future of YouTube Worldwide. We’ve put together a guide with some of the most poignant matters discussed in the video, which was posted on the YouTube blog. Read more and [...]

Last week we received confirmation of the rumors surrounding the MySpace layoffs, with the social networking company trimming its staff by 30% and releasing statements regarding its plans to restructure and focus on innovative products for its future. Today MySpace offers up more details surrounding its intent to restructure, stating that its international operations will be cut back in some regards as well.

MySpace will be refocusing its international operations around a smaller number of territories, with plans to “retain a robust global consumer presence,” according to the statement sent out by MySpace. While this plan is still subject to consultation with the international employees in various countries, MySpace is really looking to make a uniform move here across all the countries in which MySpace has a presence.
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Social networks have been racing to get their new languages launched. Today, Friendster announced that they are now available in Indonesian. Friendster has over 8 million registered users and 4 million monthly unique visitors in Indonesia alone. While Friendster is popular for dominating southeast Asia, the other social networks each have their own location and Facebook is also expanding rapidly into new territories.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Facebook opened their translations application to the general public and earlier this week MySpace’s latino portal exited beta. Social networks (or social platforms if you prefer) have realized that the largest players will most likely remain as large players for the long term. While there will be slight adjustments, the odds of a Facebook or MySpace crumbling overnight is highly unlikely as there are now dedicated user bases that have put in substantial time to build up their profiles.

Just as the internet has global appeal, so do social networks. They are currently the most effective tool for connecting the masses and are also transforming the way that society interacts with one another. Just as in the offline world, languages will continue to be a barrier to communications but photos and videos will continue to help cultures merge together. I continue to believe that social networks are the most effective platform for spreading values and ideas.

Over the next 6 months look for lack of language support to become a thing of the past as all the social networks become multi-lingual.