EU joins YouTube with saucy video
By Nicole Kobie,
The European Commission has followed the lead of the Prime Minister's office and millions of others by setting up its own YouTube account - and like many other online ventures, the EC has found a bit of sex is a great traffic draw.
Launched on the weekend, the "EU Tube" has 46 video clips on European Union topics - including a steamy video montage of sex scenes from European films, aimed at promoting the sector with its slogan "let's come together", which has drawn criticism as well as over a million hits.
British conservative MEP Chris Heaton-Harris told the BBC the clip was a waste of money. "They do have an image problem but I think cobbling together 44 seconds of soft porn on the internet is not a brilliant way of solving it," he added.
The YouTube channel for Number 10 Downing Street reached one million clip views after launching two months ago. The EU Tube channel has already been visited over 340,000 times since the Friday launch, while the "Film Lovers will love this" clip has been viewed over 1.3 million times. The next most viewed clip is a ten-minute long video showing an EU inspector testing security at Frankfurt airport, which has been viewed over 177,000 times.
Aside from the sexy clip, the commission's YouTube channel also features such as climate change, the new roaming mobile charges and the Galileo satellite navigation programme.
"It is very important for the Commission to use all the means at its disposal when it comes to communicating with European citizens," said Margot Wallström, Vice-President for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy in a statement. "We can not ignore the developments which have taken place on the internet in the past few years, in particular the popularity of video sharing sites such as YouTube."
The content is currently in English and German, but more languages will be added, the EC said.
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