Ipoque Study: Middle East Doesn’t Watch YouTube

Feeling a little bored during this long weekend? Fireworks, barbecue and HD TV shopping trips haven’t left you satisfied? Then how about a few juicy statistics about file sharing, video streaming and one click hosters? Sounds exciting? Well, you’re definitely a geek, but a lucky one too: The German traffic management company Ipoque just made it’s Internet Study 2007, which previously cost around 300 USD, available as a free download.

The study looks at popular P2P protocols and the files that are exchanged through them in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It also provides a detailed look at which streaming media formats are popular, which VOIP applications get the most traffic, which instant messaging services are most utilized and which e-books are the most pirated.

The data is based on ISP- and University-based traffic analysis, meaning that Ipoque actually had devices at 18 commercial and non-commercial access providers to take a good look at the bits flowing through their tubes. Ipoque didn’t do any measurements in the US, but it’s still worth a look to get a sense of trends in P2P and online media usage in the rest of the world. Want to get a peak? Okay, here are five little-known facts you can impress your geek friends at this weekend’s barbecue party with:

People in the Middle East don’t use Youtube. Or at least they didn’t in 2007, if we can believe Ipoque’s numbers. Only 0.07 percent of the local IP traffic was caused by streaming media applications, compared to around eight percent in Germany. P2P file sharing is also lower in the Middle East than in other regions, but with about 49 percent of all Internet traffic still fairly strong.

Germans love their language. Germany is one of the few countries where almost every single US movie and TV show gets dubbed, which leads to all kinds of odd cultural misunderstandings. Can you imagine watching Die Hard and not realizing that the bad guys are German because the good guys speak German as well? Anyway, I always assumed that the kraut P2P crowd was eager to download the original versions they don’t get to see at their local theater, but apparently I was wrong: Two of the three most torrented movies in Germany in 2007 were synchronized.

Everybody loves the Pirate Bay. There are few things that bring people from all around the world together, and the Pirate Bay’s BitTorrent tracker server seems to be one of them. It’s by far the most popular in all regions monitored by Ipoque.

No one uses Joost. Not a big surprise there I guess, but the numbers are still brutally honest. Joost’s P2P video service is most popular in Australia, where it’s able to cause 0.02 percent of all IP traffic. And yes, that’s a high number, at least compared to the other regions observed by Ipoque.

We all want to do the Lotus. This one os for all your book lovers (no pun intended) out there: Stephanie Plum might top the book store charts, but the most pirated e-book via BitTorrent is the Kama Sutra. The interest in acrobatic love-making seems to be almost universal, with the exception of Southern Europe, where people seem to prefer workout instructions. Go figure. Or I guess go and work out – and you won’t have any trouble with getting the Lotus on either.