Japan’s online research company NetRatings reports (via CNET Japan) that YouTube penetration in Japan is 5.2% which is almost close to that of US at 5.4% and that usage frequencies of 3.2 times and average viewing time of 32 min are both higher than those of the US.
If these statistics are correct (unbiased, I mean), it’s amazing! It’s amazing because most (many) Japanese I know still have a problem with English navigation and, once they know it is in English, they’d almost always stop navigating whatsoever and currently YouTube provides navigation only in English.
Why so ?
One explanation is that the videos in YouTube such as this might be quite image-centric and non verbo-centric and travel well across different languages and cultures. Nonetheless, YouTube has a very good navigation basically it’s only pressing the button, nothing verbal.
Another explanation is YouTube contains a lot of Japanese contents, which would become otherwise illegal/paid elsewhere. The Japanese viewers might think it worth breaking the language barriers.
NetRatings also notes a large number of traffic from mixi to YouTube and the introduction well given in Japanese before the viewer actually view the YouTube contents.
Anyway, I am really surprised at the statistics.
For your info, now at mixi, YouTube community has 6,363 members and Google Video has 139 members.
Update: Here is an HTML version of the original report in Japanese.
Update2:Â Interesting, below is the 45-day growth statistics of YouTube community vis-a-vis Google Video inside MIXI:
                4/29                  6/15           %Growth
 YouTube   6,363              26,704         +320%
    GoogleVideo 139              141            +1.4%