Konichiwa! Original Channels Added To Japanese YouTube. Our Anglo-centric brains may find this hard to believe, but YouTube has content in many different languages, and the Japanese YouTube is one foreign language version on the up and up.
YouTube.jp even has its own blog, and that blog recently announced YouTube’s plan to support original content from thirteen premium Japanese channels. The featured channels constitute a mixed bag, and a Google Translated version of the original page gives a decent (and grammatically hilarious) profile of each project. All of the things that we think of as Japanese staples are present: there are channels for anime, gaming, and news programming that mixes computer generated characters with live humans. Of course, there are more traditional channels as well, including a Japanese offering from Vice that I am embedding because it was the only video featured in the blog post that I could understand. YouTube Japan had its own things to say about the new channels. YouTube sends video makers to summer school — Online Video News. YouTube’s U.S. channels: “Forget Europe, show us the money” Forget going to Europe — how about giving us more money?
That’s the message from several U.S. partner channels involved in YouTube’s premium content initiative, responding to reports in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday that Google-owned YouTube plans to expand the initiative to the U.K. and France. “We’re not really funded enough to win,” griped the operator of one Los Angeles-based YouTube channel, who spoke to us on the condition his name not be mentioned for fear of alienating his powerful production partner. A first look at YouTube’s new TV stars — Online Video News.