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Last update - 09:33 02/12/2008
YouTube's new Israel home page offers insight into local viewers
By Kobi Ben-Simhon
Tags: China, YouTube, israel news 

The YouTube video file-sharing site recently launched an Israeli home page that offers a fascinating peek at the viewing habits of Israeli users. The page displays Israeli viewers' favorite clips and Israeli-made clips that are popular among viewers worldwide. Similar to the service provided in many other countries, the Israeli page displays statistics based upon various categories, such as the most-viewed clips of the day and the week.

Now the world of the average Israeli surfer is reflected in the strange mixture typical of YouTube, ranging from Mercedes Sosa in Israel (14,000 viewings), a porn clip (9,000), or Einav Bublil fainting on (Israeli reality show) "Big Brother" (1,500), and a March clip of a paratrooper unit which was viewed 170 times and not rated even once.

"The purpose of the Israeli page is to bring the site's Israeli-user community together around local content," says Moshe Hager, Google Israel's spokesman (Google acquired YouTube two years ago). "The reactions from users around the globe show that local communities need content that is relevant and interesting to them. The purpose of the new page is to make it easier for Israeli surfers to find the content that interests them."
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Last week, the most popular video on the Israeli home page was an animated clip called "Stars," created by Jerusalem animator and illustrator Maya Weksler. "Stars," which presents the story of a grandmother who dies and goes to heaven, had been viewed close to 860,000 times worldwide.

"Three weeks ago I opened a channel on YouTube and uploaded, among other things, my final project at Bezalel [Academy of Art and Design]," says Weksler excitedly. "A few days later I suddenly saw I had received 600 comments in my e-mail inbox."

Users who upload a video clip can watch the statistics as well as the number of views over a certain period of time and obtain demographic data on viewers. Recounting how her clip grew in popularity, Weksler noted, "I saw 20,000 viewings of the film were registered after four hours. After 24 hours the number had risen to 200,000. The film was apparently promoted on YouTube's main home page for a few minutes, sparking tremendous interest. I discovered that in its early hours, the film was very popular in Saudi Arabia, and then there were a lot of viewings from China, Brazil, Canada and the United States. There were also thousands from Peru. What happened was simply amazing."
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