The country of Vietnam is among YouTube’s top 10 foreign markets.
It has become a major test area in Asia.
YouTube announced the ranking at a Ho Minh City event celebrating the one-year anniversary of Vietnam’s YouTube channel.
Vietnam was not close to the top 10 two years ago. Since then, young people thrilled by technology make YouTube popular in Vietnam. The website reports that 400 hours worth of video are uploaded per minute.
Vietnam’s YouTube channel has debuted with "120 percent year-on-year growth in terms of watch time,” according to Phuong Anh Nguyen, a YouTube official.
Vietnamese are watching YouTube at a big rate. Females are watching British singer Adele’s “Hello.” Foreign situation comedies, like Australia's “Thank God You're Here,” get 3 to 4 million views per episode in Vietnam, according to the country’s newspaper, Tuoi Tre.
The southeast Asia country is also a YouTube test site. The company tries out services for emerging markets in Vietnam. An offline option of saving clips began in April.
How did Vietnam and YouTube become so friendly?
Inexpensive data plans is one reason. Vietnamese own smartphones rather than laptop computers. Vietnamese connect their smartphones to wireless Internet.
They also expect WiFi everywhere. Vietnamese tend to save videos. Their country’s videos are featured on the site. They favor YouTube over other video services like Vimeo, Hulu or Netflix.
I’m Anne Ball.
Lien Hoang reported on this story for VOANews.com. Jim Dresbach adapted this story for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.
Words in This Story
upload – v. to move or copy a file or program from a computer or device to a usually larger computer or computer network
comedy – n. a play, movie, television program or novel that is meant to make people laugh
laptop – n. a small computer that is designed to be easily carried
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