Repsol YPF

In an attempt to emulate the success of this portal, the communication group Vocento created Dalealplay, the first Spanish portal which is exclusively devoted to viewing and uploading video clips.

Created in October last year as another element of the virtual community being developed by Advernet, which is also responsible for the Ozú portal, Dalealplay has already reached one million users per month. Users which can benefit from a web 2.0 applications environment within a setting adapted to the characteristics of the Hispanic market, which enables all connected users to communicate with each other.

The video clips are organised by categories so as to make it easier for Internet users to find those which best suit their tastes. They can be uploaded in a post, sent to friends or added to “favourites”. There is also a tag system or different sized labels reflecting the hot topics. 

Amongst the exclusive tools offered by Dalealplay, a subtitling system stands out which enables users to provide humorous translations for videos which are in other languages. Likewise, in order to make browsing and finding video clips easier, it has an application which shows users all the other clips in the database related to the one they are watching, using themes and key words. That way you have direct access to all content which may most interest you.

The most common searches
Generally speaking, people who use online video services are looking for humour and entertainment. Those who connect to Dalealplay are no exception and of the 40 million plus videos viewed since it was launched in October 2006, a lot of them, 40% to be precise, belong to the “Entertainment” category. “People” and “Music” are other popular categories. The latter recorded a 246% increase last May, which shows the viewing potential that these portals have for the music industry.

Internet users can go straight to the most popular videos of the moment, to their favourite categories or groups, or perform searches using key words. The most common search terms include “humour”, “advert”, “funny” and “music”. Searching by name, it is worth mentioning that Dalealplay users are interested in the image of people like Brad Pitt and his partner Angelina Jolie, the former inmate and rich heiress Paris Hilton and the Colombian singer Shakira. 

An interesting piece of information is that whilst television audiences avoid adverts like the plague, the opposite is true of online video platforms. Many users of these sites look for adverts, which are nothing but funny, witty short stories. It is no surprise that the funniest television adverts occupy the top positions in the list of the most popular videos on Dalealplay. 

YouTube, in Spanish
If language was an incentive for Spaniards to choose Dalealplay over YouTube, the Google platform has just broken that barrier. The most popular video portal is now available in Spanish (http://es.youtube.com).

The objective of the directors and founders of the company, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, is “to make a global community out of local experiences”. As well as in Spanish, there are now Brazilian, Dutch, French, Italian, Polish and Japanese versions. These portals offer users the home page and search functions in their own language, as well as a selection of the most popular local videos. 

However, this portal does not only live from the videos uploaded by individual Internet users. Many companies now have their own channels. In Spain, for example, television channels such as Antena 3, Aragón Televisión and Cuatro have their own space on YouTube, as do the two main political parties.