Online Video sharing and uploading is becoming extremely popular in the Kingdom

Online Video sharing and uploading is becoming extremely popular in the Kingdom, and uploads on YouTube have grown 260 percent year-on-year on the site’s Saudi specific edition, claimed a senior director of the video website. There are 13 million Saudis using the Internet and a new trend is expanding where they are expressing themselves by uploading online videos, according to Patrick Walker, YouTube’s senior director for content partnerships in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “YouTube video has been available in its English language version for many years, and this region is one of the fastest growing regions in this field. In addition, as we have been building a lot of audience and enthusiasm in this market, we launched the Arabic language version sometime ago, and last year we introduced a version that is specific for Saudi Arabia. We have seen a 260 percent year-on-year video increase in uploads and views, whereas the average internationally is 50 percent,” senior director said. senior director added the MENA region is one of the fastest growing in the world and the Kingdom is one of the fastest growing countries in the world. There are 4 billion views a day in the region, while the Kingdom accounts for 100 million of those, Walker indicated. “When Google acquired company YouTube five or six years ago, which is when I joined the company, the number of video portal viewers worldwide were 100 million a day,” said Walker. In his opinion, the reasons for this enormous boost included Internet connections becoming faster, allowing people to consume videos much more easily on video portal. Viewing YouTube clips is more easily accessible on smart mobile phones device, computers, tablet and laptops.