Found on TheLocal.se:

Eniro has acquired 48.1% of the shares in Netclips AB, which owns Sweden’s answer to YouTube, bubblare.se. Eniro, the leading search company on the Nordic market, will also receive an option to acquire the remaining 51.9% of the shares. At bubblare.se, users can view others’ home videos and upload their own. Traffic figures released in September showed that Bubblare.se had up to 30 times more viewers for Scandinavian film clips than YouTube.

“We see exciting opportunities in video communities, video searches and video advertising. With this acquisition, we can increase the dynamic content of our services, primarily on our portals, but also in search services, such as eniro.se. Bubblare.se is a popular site in Sweden and will generate additional traffic to Eniro’s other services,” said Cecilia Geijer, Vice President of Eniro, in a statement.

Bubblare.se was started on September 1, 2006 and is also established in Norway, Finland and Denmark. The site operates along the same lines as YouTube. The only difference is the language.

What it means: Eniro, the directory publisher from the Nordic Countries, strikes again and acquires a user-generated video site. Given that they also operate a popular search engine & portal, this makes complete sense. But I think they’ve clearly positioned themselves in the very hot online video advertising market. As Michael Taylor from the Kelsey Group blog says: “While many think of YouTube and other mainstream video sites such as Yahoo! as the most likely vehicles for online video, why couldn’t online Yellow Pages emerge as a leader?”. I think Eniro made a very forward-thinking acquisition. Bravo!