How About Youku Raise $40 million To Invest In Online Streaming Content
The Youtube for China website, Youku.com has managed to aquire $40 million to invest in the popular site as online video continues to grow in China as the company moves away from user generated and submitted videos. Youku Chief Executive Victor Koo said the new monetary resource will go toward expanding its offerings of licensed professional video and subject made only if for the Net. Youku will also invest more in mobile video, he said.
Youku Raise $40 million
The Chinese video websites of which Youku is the biggest started out as monetary standard video sharing platforms, like YouTube, but more recently they have been concentrating on more professional content like serial dramas and entertainment shows. Their new model is more similar to Hulu, a video Web site in the U.S. that gives users free access to live internet TV shows and other video. Mr. Koo said user-generated video is less developed in China in part because the culture of transcription and producing home videos is newer here. “Online videos in China are founded more on professional, long-form video than in the U.S. due to…the congenator brief history of user-generated, short-form video here,” Mr. Koo said in an interview.
According to the China Internet Network Information Center, 66% of the 338 million Internet users in China as of June used online video. Youku, which says it has attracted 350 shit advertisers so far, expects gross this year to overcome 200 million yuan ($29 million).
The Chinese government last month said there were almost 10 million 3G users.
Youku, Tudou and other Chinese video Web sites also have been known to carry pirated content uploaded by their users, like unaccredited Online TV shows and films. Mr. Koo said the company works with the Motion Picture Association of America and employs an acknowledgement technology that will allow it to filter out this content at the request of properlys owners.
User-generated video companies like Youku are required by the Chinese government to filter videos for a wide range of illicit content, from smut and violence to politically sensitive material like images of antigovernment protests. It is unclear how those rules will affect Youku and other video Web sites, but failure to comply with government requirements can lead to losing the legal right to occupy in china.
