Yahoo took its quest for online video-sharing popularity to Europe, launching local Yahoo Video Web sites in France, Spain, Germany and Italy, an AFP report said.
The AFP report said each Web site was customized to the individual country's language, culture and trends, said Yahoo manager of social media Jason Zajac.
'You always want a social product to be relevant to the community using it,' Zajac told AFP. 'You want people to be able to chat online and read instructions in the local language.'
The English-language version of Yahoo Video was launched May 31 and more than half the users were from outside the US, particularly Britain, Australia and New Zealand, the AFP report said.
'The ultimate goal is to provide it to as much of the market as possible,' Yahoo spokesman Stephen Davis was quoted as saying when asked about plans to localize Yahoo Video for Asia and other places.
Yahoo's tailoring of a social networking video-sharing service complete with editing tools for creating clips came in the wake of Google's purchase of video Web site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock, the AFP report said.
At the time of the YouTube purchase, Google's founders and chief executive predicted video sharing and streaming would be driving forces in the evolution of the Internet, the report further said.