You can see this in the last chart below. In Russian, gaming videos dominate. It’s the most popular category in English and Spanish, too. But in Hindi, Entertainment and Education are on top. And for all the attention English-language political content gets in the popular discourse, English has the smallest number of videos in the “News and Politics” category.
Terms like “median duration by language” may sound dry at first, but there are stories hidden in the data. Here, they hint at a sea change in the way people use video in many parts of the world.
Next, we looked at popularity metrics – views, likes and comments – and once again, Hindi YouTube was an outlier. It demonstrated extreme inequality. Just 0.1% of Hindi videos accounted for 79% of views (the other languages ranged from 54% to 59%). But there’s an interesting twist. Those less popular videos were far more likely to have likes.
That suggests something deeper. On Hindi YouTube, even the videos that aren’t being seen are being appreciated and acknowledged. Our new research suggests YouTube in India may often be used like a video messaging service to talk to friends and family, with public videos often intended for a private audience.
We think some of these differences can be explained by how the internet has been adopted in India, and the country’s TikTok inheritance. This may be a different kind of attention economy, less about mass reach, more about small, meaningful engagement. It may be a sign of something more intimate, and perhaps even more human.