Written on March 15, 2008 – 11:40 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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This week, Beijing-based research agency BDA announced that China is now the largest Internet market. With 220 million connected people they’ve outnumbered the US with 4 million users.
In this huge market, there’s an interesting battle between one YouTube rip-off against another going on. Tudou and Youku are both fighting for the attention of the 220 million online Chinese, and I must say, it’s one helluva fight. There’s of course lots of money involved, a government that cannot be trusted and even Mr. Murdoch comes along.
Reuters reported that Youku has partnered up with MySpace China. Officiously not for the money, considering that Youku completed three rounds of funding last year that make up for 40 million dollars. It’s more about targeting the local market. Youku CEO Victor Koo: “The partnership is aimed at driving Internet traffic to both Web sites and sharing online products”.
While Youku is celebrating this good news, Tudou is probably still a bit nervous. Last week our WebTipr from China, Doron Vermaat, interviewed Tudou co-founder Marc van der Chijs about rumors about a possible shutdown. The rumors seem to be nonsense, yet due to the loads of attention they got, the damage is already done. Van der Chijs: ““It’s hard to find out where this rumor is coming from but I am pretty sure the competition don’t have any problems with the fact that this kind of rumors about Tudou are created and spread.”
After a long search on the web, it seems like Youku is the most popular service. According to Nielsen/NetRatings the service has more than 100 million daily video views (December 2007). In the summer of 2007, Tudou counted 360 million video clips per week.
They’ve one thing in common: both are growing with an unseen speed. Youku had a 20-fold increase and Tudou grew from 131 to 360 million video clips per week in just three months. Other top video sharing websites in China include: 56.com, mofile.com, 5show.com, pomoho.com, uume.com and 6rooms.com (source). You would almost think that Chinese internet users are only browsing video sites. Just think of the revenue as soon as the services find a way to monetize their content and you’ll realize that China will one day be the largest internet market in money terms as well.
Written on March 7, 2008 – 9:17 am
Doron Vermaat, Next Web Webtipr China
At the end of 2007, two Chinese government ministries, SARFT and MII, announced a new set of rules to govern online video websites like Tudou.com, Youku.com, 56.com and other Youtube clones.
Last night Chinese language portal Netease published an article saying that SARFT had made use of these new online video regulations and ordered Tudou to cease operations because it was suspected there was porn on the site.
Tudou is the world’s largest video sharing website, claiming three times the traffic volume of YouTube. During the summer of 2007, Nielsen/NetRatings reported that Tudou was one of the fastest growing websites on the Web, growing from 131 to 360 million video clips per week in just three months.
The article on Netease have been taken offline but unfortunately for Tudou the story already was picked up by several bloggers and quickly made its way into the English blogosphere with posts on CNET Asia and David Feng’s Techblog86.
In an email reply to me Tudou co-founder Marc van der Chijs says that Tudou didn’t received a take-down notice and that the story is nothing more than a rumor. He regrets that some bloggers do little research to back up there claims “It’s hard to find out where this rumor is coming from but I am pretty sure the competition don’t have any problems with the fact that this kind of rumors about Tudou are created and spread. ”
I share Marc’s opinion about the fact that many bloggers and even journalists shoot from the hip without checking there sources. I just hope for him this rumor will stay a rumor.
Written on February 29, 2008 – 1:35 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
China’s most popular search engine Baidu.com said it plans to launch an instant messaging service. The marketing division of Baidu wasn’t really in a creative mood when they made up the name, as it will be ‘Baidu Hi’. Baidu is currently recruiting personnel to take care of the product design, research and testing.
“We are very excited to enter the IM market in China,” said Haoyu Shen, Baidu’s vice president of business operations in a statement. “The Internet is playing an increasingly important role in people’s lives in China, and we are constantly looking for ways to bring more convenience and functionality to our users. With Baidu’s strengths in creating online communities, and with our suite of popular products such as Baidu Knows, Baidu Post Bar and Baidu Space, we are confident that Baidu Hi will become a strong competitor in China’s IM market.”
If I worked at eBuddy or Meebo, I’d be delighted to hear this news. Since this will probably stimulate more Chinese people to start using instant messaging. As soon as the two companies have found a way to integrate this new IM service, the number of users might grow enormously.
Update: The guys from Wakoopa mailed us a scoop. The Baidu im-service will be client-based. Software service Wakoopa tracked four people using a ‘IM tool from Baidu.com, Inc.’ for 8 minutes and 58 seconds.
Written on February 19, 2008 – 12:26 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The Californian court ruling to cut off Wikileaks.org from the Internet has shocked the blogosphere. We’re used to censorship news from China, yet when decisions like these appear in the US, alarm bells start ringing.
Wikileaks is a rather controversial websites that gives whistle-blowers an anonymous stage for their revealed secrets. So far they’ve posted millions of government and corporate documents. Turns out they’ve posted a few too many, namely several hundred documents about the offshore activities of a Swiss bank. The bank has send in an army of lawyers who managed to convince the court to order that Dynadot, the company that hosts the domain name, should remove all traces of Wikileaks.org from its servers.
According to the BCC, the people from Wikileaks claimed that the order was “unconstitutional” and said that the site had been “forcibly censored”.
Unfortunately for Bank Julius Baer, the legal action will probably result in more people reading the documents in question
Good news for the dissidents and journalists: the site is still accessible via 88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks. It’s hosted in Sweden, a country that sort of becomes a beacon of hope for controversial Internet companies as Pirate Bay is also hosted there. Duncan Riley from TechCrunch correctly stated that “unfortunately for Bank Julius Baer, the legal action will probably result in more people reading the documents in question”.
Wikileaks is now linked on all the major news sites and blogs, thus millions of people will visit the page. Some of them might find documents there that are of interest for them. So I think we can come to an optimistic conclusion here, censorship in the form of cutting of domain names isn’t rewarding. It just leads to more attention.
However, you might have noticed the ‘yet’ in the headline. With China rapidly improving and expanding its electronic wall, we can’t be all too happy here. We still live in a world where billions of people don’t have uncensored access to the web. When will China’s advanced techniques be used in European countries and the US?
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