# Ethiotube: you a tube, me a tube, everyone a tube-tube


I’ve posted some [great Amharic dance
videos](http://reganmian.net/blog/2007/12/10/amharic-dance-videos/)
earlier, and today I came across [Ethiotube.net](http://ethiotube.net),
a Youtube clone started in February this year and describe themselves in
this way:

> Founded in February 2007, EthioTube is the leader in Ethiopian online
> video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos
> related to Ethiopia worldwide through a Web experience. EthioTube
> allows people, mostly Ethiopians, to easily upload and share video
> clips on [www.ethiotube.net](http://www.ethiotube.net/) and across the
> Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

So far, they only seem to have 81 videos online (according to the
statistics), which varies widely. There are some dance videos, but also
some documentaries. Here is a scary short film about a white fire and
brimstone preacher who gives an Ethiopian audience the whole
tele-evangelist treatment:

*(An embedded EthioTube video was here; the Flash player no longer exists.)*

And here is a clip from what looks to be “Ethiopia’s Next Great
Stand-up Comedian”… I cannot understand what she says, but it sounds interesting.

*(An embedded EthioTube video was here; the Flash player no longer exists.)*

When I wrote this blog post, the most viewed clip was a talk on Ethiopian Higher
Education with 800 views. Today (April 2, 2013), the most viewed video is [a clip from an Ethopian film](http://www.ethiotube.net/video/221/Addis-Hiwot-Ethiopian-Film) with more than 172,000 views.

What I find interesting in all this is the idea of setting up a Youtube
clone for a country - or a cause. I know there is already
[](http://www.teachertube.com/)Teachertube, partly started because
Youtube is blocked in so many schools. What are the advantages and
disadvantages to doing this? Should there be envirotube, gaytube, and
obamatube? (Some of these exist, although with different names).

There
are strong local video sites in China, like [Youku](http://youku.com)
and [Ku6](http://www.ku6.com), but not only is the interface language
completely different (and so is the language used on most of the videos
of course), but there are also issues of speed of access from hosting
within China, internal censorship to avoid being blocked wholesale, etc.
However, the interface for Ethiotube is all in English, and many of the
movies, although related to Ethiopia, are in English as well. I am not
sure where the servers are located, and if that makes a difference
locally - but my first hunch was that the main target group is the
Ethiopian diaspora, with high-speed internet access.

On the one hand I am sure Yotube can use all the competition it can get,
and creating meeting places for a diaspora is a worthy cause. On the
other hand, I would never have come across the Ethiopian dance clips -
or a huge amount of other crazy, improbable and wonderful clips - if it
hadn’t been in one central location. And to a certain extent this
reminds me of the predilection I saw in the open source community to
always want to start their own applications, instead of contributing to
already existing projects, or to constantly want to roll their own Linux
distributions. One for Indonesia, one for Muslims, one by the Department
of Education, one for each campus…

Not sure where this is going, but it will be interesting to see how this
develops - whether everyone end up on Facebook, or the Germans are on
[StudiVz](http://www.studivz.net/), the Russians on
[VKontakte](http://vkontakte.ru/), the Chinese on
[Xiaonei](http://xiaonei.com/) and the Turkish on
[Qiraz](http://qiraz.com/tr/user/login)?

Stian