14 DAY TRIAL // Wednesday was the day that the Internet users in South Korea saw Google tend to their needs and launch a localized version of the largest video sharing service website in the world. This is the 19th country that YouTube has descended from the bytes realm to.
User-created content is the thing YT is after in order to grow its audience and its main selling point so far. Guess what, Asian countries have been known to be very tech friendly and very "content producing," so the expansion into the Asian market was the logical thing for Google's service to do. By the looks of it, YouTube is trying to play it safe now, after having had so many problems over copyright infringement. They closed deals with the local companies in order to supplement the vast collection it already put together for its users. Of course, there's still going to be trouble later on, but for now it's all legit.
Sakina Ariswala, the head of YouTube's international operation, told the Yonhap agency that "South Korea is a very interesting market." Setting aside the redundancy of the affirmation (if it weren't interesting, the site would not be there), the statement just goes to prove that the continuous growth of Internet reach in Asia has reached the peak where it can be called profitable.
There's been the usual "opening a new YouTube site" talk about the ease it brings to spreading the country's popular culture and video content worldwide, according to AFP. Nevertheless, it was obligatory for that to have been said, as Google still trails some local companies in South Korea in many domains. Surprisingly, it is behind as a search engine. And that is in a country that is among the most Internet savvy in the world.