I Link You

German YouTube

Although it's hard to beat YouTube's behemoth user base and popularity, there are many foreign sites trying to use the advantage of language and culture to build a niche market. Oddly enough, I used Dailymotion while in France because I couldn't access NBC's TV page to keep up with one of my favorite TV shows, Heroes. The French subtitles served as a positive externality as I actually learned to associate French words with English words.

I'm now taking German this quarter, and I thought it would be a good idea to watch American or Korean TV with German subtitles or at least find entertaining German videos. I did find a German YouTube called Sevenload. Not only you can share videos, but you can also share photos as well. Functionality remains nearly the same as YouTube with the option of switching to your desired language. You can integrate your own media into the embedded player and like YouTube be able to put them up on your own websites or blogs to share with friends, families, and strangers. It supports the usual API such as Ajax, ATOM, and RSS. There are limits to your upload. You can only upload 200 mb at a time. Also, you're only allowed 250 files at once in an account or archives, but apparently there is a maximum of 100 files for each archive. Maybe something got lost in translation as that seems like it won't add up. Most media file types are accepted, but your file will be converted and saved as the "sevenload"-compatible file on the server.

With YouTube getting all the lawsuits slapped all over them, I'm just waiting for the EU to take similar steps in slapping intellectual property lawsuits on Sevenload and Dailymotion. Then again, I guess they are more interested in watching the American products fail and their homegrown products succeed. Regardless, at least I found my site where I can view German videos and improve my German (hopefully).

posted by Koh @ 3:14 PM