The Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) and Google hosted a ‘Made for YouTube’ gathering in Kuala Lumpur last week to highlight Malaysian YouTube content creators. The program was introduced earlier this year to nurture and develop homegrown talents, in line with Malaysia’s goal to be a creative technology content hub of Asia.
Now who hasn’t heard of The Grim Film and DiDi & Friends? All massive local YouTube creators enjoying millions of views and following. The Grim Film’s “The Long Distance Relationship” has hit 2 millions views, while DiDi & Friend’s “Kalau Rasa Gembira” with 5.6 million views.
The ‘Made For YouTube’ program has the objective of growing this talent pool further, with the backing of over 20 MSC Malaysia-status companies and new startups. Support comes in form of production facilities, development funding, dedicated manpower, growth strategies and strategic advice from both MDeC and Google.
Main categories of channels are in animation, games/gamification/reviews, original content series and music videos.
MDeC is on a game-changing mission to spur the creative content landscape for Malaysia, especially in the gaming segment. Under its Digital Malaysia national agenda, it aims to move Malaysian from mere consumption- to production-centric.
This is expected to create new income generation opportunities via new digital business models. According to MDeC the creative content industry is estimated to be worth RM7billion. Unfortunately, local content only accounts for 15% of the total.
Les’ Copaque’s phenomenal ‘Upin and Ipin’ series shows Malaysia does indeed have the talent. The animation studio became a YouTube Partner in 2012, and has since generated over 488 videos, boasting 195,000 subscribers with over 135 million total views.
Numbers have ballooned to 500,000 subscribers with more than 400 million views, today.
Another notable success story is DD Animation, established in 2008. Their pre-school IP ‘DiDi & Friends’ won MDeC’s Intellectual Property Creators Challenge (IPCC) in 2012. Thanks to MDeC, DD Animation started publishing its content on YouTube. The animation studio now has over 46,000 subscribers and gets 190,000 views per day. It’s one of the fastest growing channels since the start of the Made for YouTube program.
Animonsta is another success story, one of the fastest rising channels in all of Asia Pacific for YouTube. It’s hit ‘boboiboy’ series has raked in 400 million views, with over 400,000 subscribers to date.
Visit www.mdec.my, www.mscmalaysia.my and www.digitalmalaysia.my for more information.
