Tags: América Latina, fenómeno social, YouTubers
YouTube has achieved high penetration in Latin America. The platform has close to 132.7 million unique visitors, according to Statista. Internet users spend 15% of their daily time surfing through this audiovisual social network.
Added to these data is the fact that monthly Internet use in Latin America is 21 hours in average, being Uruguay and Brazil the markets in which the user employs between 32.6 and 29.4 per month respectively, surfing on their mobile devices, laptops or PCs.
YouTube’s great reception in the region is now experiencing a growing trend of video-bloggers or YouTubers that mobilize the masses and generate powerful opinions that do not even manage to emulate reputable columnists of chiefs of State.
YouTube fever has transcended the traditional or offline environment. Evidence of this is the chaos produced by 10,000 youngsters at the Bogota International Book Fair, who wanted to be at the signing of Germán Garmendia’s book ‘Chupa el perro’. I decided to offer a list of today’s top YouTubers, given their social expressions and subsequent their implications:
According to Socialblade, Germán is third on the ranking of most subscribed YouTubers, reaching 28,839,909 and 2,734,896,234 views (figured taken at 3:51 p.m. on Monday, August 8). He covers subjects that vary from relationships, teachers and addictions, among others.
This Mexican youngster offers her opinions on culinary subjects, romance, beauty, health, decoration and makeup, targeting Latin American teens and youth. This beauty ‘guru’ has an enormous following, registering 15,557,135 subscribers and 1,586,986,996 views
More than a YouTuber, it’s an artistic association that produces web series, sketches and comedy parodies about different life stages. In addition, they live stream different contents, such as interactive discussions.
This channel, centered in new audiovisual formats, registers 11,812,301 subscribers and 3,180,916,224 views.
This Mexican video-blogger focuses on publishing personal audiovisual chronicles on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays that narrate his everyday experiences and situations, as well as addressing different stages in life such as high school, watching a football game, going to a club, among others.
Werevertumorro has 11,855,160 subscribers and 1,621,971,453 views.
This channel puts a twist of dark humor and comic-tragedy to narrated stories or anecdotes, as he likes to call them. He narrates to the public stories about different social and technological matters, as well as historical events, looking to “fact-check assumed truths”.
This YouTube channel has an audience of 9,195,976 subscribers and 1,686,104,938 views.
This Peruvian YouTuber has a comedic approach to everyday experiences, such as capturing Pokémons, evaluating Facebook’s user experience, videogames, among others.
His channel has 1,150,455 subscribers and 317,569,682 views.
7. Julio Ríos Gallego – julioprofenet (Colombia)
This arithmetic and math teacher, from Cali (Colombia), decided that it was time to create ways to help his students solve all of their questions pending after classes. The best method for Julio was to create a YouTube channel with videos explaining the most difficult subjects.
This method represented an educational revolution in the Internet. His channel currently has 1,109,389 subscribers and 191,589,040 views.
8. Cid Vela – Galatzia (Mexico)
This Mexican YouTuber, though his alter-ego of a woman with a pink wig, offers exaggerated criticism of different everyday situations such as traveling by plane, singing songs, using public transportation, buying in different supermarket chains, among others.
In addition, he publishes presentations, reflections and opinions on movies, TV series and even public events.
This channel has 2,038,666 subscribers and 244,475,850 views.
This channel has a different approach from those previously mentioned: its content targets younger children, publishing riddles and stories for children, classic tales, relaxing music and drawing techniques, among others.
This channel has 1,536,894 subscribers and 921,820,097 views.
10. Daniel Samper Ospina (Colombia)
The most recent revelation in the YouTube world is this Colombian columnist, who has targeted public personalities, as well as political and economic figures from his country through satire in his weekly press articles.
On this opportunity, Samper decided to dive into the blogosphere through YouTube, launching his #HolaSoyDanny channel, where he covers the experiences and challenges of a regular 40-year-old man with a comedic twist.
Three months into its creation, the channel has achieved 130,067 subscribers and 3,007,949 views.
The YouTubers that I mentioned have the capacity to surpass, in terms of audience and exposure, any type of traditional media, thus becoming – through love and hate – public opinion leaders able to mobilize audiences around a social issue.
The emergence of these new players in the communications field enrich the public environment though a wide arrange of opinions, which at the end strengthen the knowledge and entertainment of the societal base.