The site's observer figured out the phenomenon of the Chinese analogue of YouTube - video hosting Youku. The service, created in 2006, has already surpassed YouTube in some respects, and in the future it aims to become one of the largest companies in China.
There are a huge number of sites on the Chinese Internet that are analogues of more popular worldwide services. This is largely due to the characteristics of China, as a country with high level censorship that restricts the appearance of foreign content. That's why local entrepreneurs are trying to fill the gaps with their own products.
Youku is intended to replace YouTube, which is blocked by the Chinese government. At the same time, this video hosting service performs its task so well that it has already surpassed its eminent competitor in some indicators. For example, more than 13 billion minutes are streamed on Youku every day, which is much more compared to YouTube, which has only 3 billion.
The Chinese video portal has moved a huge number of TV series online, effectively replacing national television. And finally, he was able to gather an audience of more than 400 million people. All this was the result of boundless faith in the project of one man, who in his homeland is called the strangest businessman.
A huge audience and proper advertising allowed the producers of the series to almost completely transfer all their premieres to Youku and only after that start showing on the channels. This approach ensured permanent growth of the video portal’s audience, but did not solve all its problems, because the resource still remained unprofitable. In fact, the company lost almost $30 million in three quarters of 2010.
In order to solve financial problems, Youku, which has an audience of 150 million users, carried out an IPO that same year, which allowed it to raise $203 million. In addition, according to Victor Ku, this gave the company the opportunity to express itself in the international market and thereby diversify its content.
The bet paid off, and Youku soon struck several deals with major US video and television companies. At the same time, the video portal did not always buy American TV series or films, but received the rights to film its own versions of famous films.
This approach allowed the service to be noted by the government, which assessed the impact of the resource on the development of the film industry in China. In addition, the company has involved the authors of top videos in some of its projects. Such a non-trivial move increased traffic to the site, because everyone wanted to feel like a movie star.
The agreements concluded with large American film companies, as well as television channels, helped to significantly increase the level of profits. The benefits of this solution became especially noticeable when Youku began to be used as a platform for advertising blockbusters. Trailers for films from major Hollywood studios received up to 25 million views per day. The site’s huge audience and convenient functionality allowed a number of films to significantly increase their fees. The record holder for this indicator was the film “Jurassic World”, which, thanks to promotion on Youku, was able to collect more than $300 million in China and became one of the highest-grossing blockbusters in history.
This fully applies to music. Many studios from all over the world have realized that in order to ensure the success of an album in China, they must first post the clips on Youku. Naturally, this had a positive impact on the growth rate of the service’s audience.
In addition to world fame, 2010 brought the company a lot of different records. The service took first place in the number of views in China. Youku has become the official video provider of the Chinese version Mozilla Firefox. In addition, the successful IPO allowed the company to end a financially poor year with a profit of 200 million yuan.
The desire to turn a huge video portal into a profitable business forced the service’s management to think about a monetization strategy. The final model was in many ways similar to its global counterparts. First of all, this can be attributed to advertising.
The Chinese respond to all restrictions and prohibitions not with protests, but with new discoveries. Over the past decade, the information market has been replenished with such analogues of global applications and services as WeChat, Baidu, and, of course, Youku.
The term “Youku” itself is translated from Chinese as “excellent,” which very well characterizes this multifunctional video hosting site. The Chinese analogue of YouTube appeared a little over ten years ago, but has already managed to displace its Western competitor. Youku managed to replace not only similar video services, but also national television. Now on this portal they watch not only cute videos with cats, but also TV series with Chinese subtitles. How did the company manage to achieve this?
The founder of Youku is less famous outside of China than Jobs or Zuckerberg. But for short term Victor Ku managed to achieve a lot. Immediately after graduating from an American university, he returned to Beijing, where, together with a group of like-minded people, he founded Youku. Already in December 2006, the service began its work. Initially, it was not something original, but in three years the company managed to stand out among other Chinese startups. Within a couple of years, Youku absorbed its main competitor, Tudou, and became the most popular video hosting service in China. The only negative is that it is focused only on China, unlike YouTube. That’s why there are practically no English-language videos and comments on the site. But the service still has many more advantages. To begin with, the fact that Youku is now already producing full-fledged content, and not just providing the opportunity to post it, is enough.
The popularity of Youku was added by the fact that in 2008 in China YouTube was blocked . But even from this, local developers managed to benefit. At that time, it seemed to many that Youku would also be blocked, because it published the same content, and some of the videos on the site were also pirated.
In order not to lose audience by deleting TV series and films, Victor Ku decided to follow the same path as Netflix. Thanks to cooperation with American companies, a huge number of licensed products. However, some series still had to be abandoned in order to avoid blocking. The short list of prohibited topics included erotica and anti-propaganda of the PRC. They compensated for this with content produced by local creators. Producers of Chinese TV series gladly took up this initiative, and many premieres began to appear first on the Internet, and only then on TV. Due to this, the audience grew larger. But, on the contrary, income has decreased, oddly enough.
Therefore, Victor Ku and his colleagues had to once again reconsider their plans for video hosting. Youku began actively buying the rights to reshoot popular TV series and films in America and the West. Both ordinary users and the government liked this. Now on the site you can find Chinese remakes of many famous projects, which are much more popular among locals than the originals.
There was another advantage of cooperation with American companies. Trailers for future world premieres were now primarily posted on Youku. This was beneficial for both Hollywood and China. American studios received their views (for example, Jurassic World, one of the most expensive films in cinema history, received most of its profits from promotion in China), and Youku received money. Producers of music videos decided to use the same scheme, realizing how large an audience uses this service.
Having started to receive good income, the company decided to support ordinary users involved in content production. The idea, in fact, is not new. Most video services offer a good monetization model. Youku did it too. To diversify the content without breaking any rules, Victor Koo held original video clip competitions several times. Content makers competed with each other, simultaneously delighting viewers with interesting videos and getting the opportunity to earn a good cash prize. And over time, top video bloggers began to receive offers of cooperation with the very companies that are engaged in professional filming of domestic TV series. This way, they were motivated to give their best when filming their videos.
To support individual content makers and entire studios, the service’s management did two things at once. Firstly, they introduced advertising, which was practically non-existent on the site before. Short commercials began to be shown before each video. Secondly, like Netflix, the company decided to provide the opportunity to watch TV series for a nominal fee. The initial subscription price - two and a half dollars, or 15 yuan per month - was not that much. And for those who didn’t want to shell out money for permanent access, I had to pay five yuan for one movie show. Viewers already had a choice - if you are an avid movie fan, buy a monthly subscription and watch an unlimited number of episodes for your own pleasure. If you don’t have much time for entertainment, you can simply pay a small fee from time to time to watch the next episode of your favorite series.
At this stage, when Youku’s business was more than successful, Alibaba Group drew attention to Victor Ku’s creation. They bought back part of the company's shares, which expanded Youku's capabilities and significantly increased their budget. Already in 2014, the company's income broke all previous records. In addition, it was thanks to cooperation with Alibaba that video hosting became what we see it now.
First, Youku has driven out all of its competitors in China. Secondly, they decided to step out of their comfort zone and attract viewers from other countries. As already mentioned, the company does not seek to conquer America or Europe. They are planning to take over the Asian market. So far, alas, not very successful. On the one hand, the company is already actively purchasing rights to show Korean dramas and TV series. As the American example has shown, such a strategy leads to success. But many videos violate Korean censorship, which is much stricter than Chinese censorship. Therefore, progress is very slow. But now no one doubts that Victor Ku will succeed. After all, this man, whom his compatriots call “the strangest businessman,” really understands his business, and, more importantly, loves it.
Today I will present to your attention 10 most popular and famous sites, which are used in China. Among them there are analogues of ICQ, Youtube, Twitter, Vkontakte, Wikipedia, Google. It's great if you're good enough Chinese to read original articles, because this adds you +100 points from each article you read and +300 from every movie you watch in Chinese.
The most popular messaging platform in China, similar to our QIP, MSN, etc. It was launched back in 1999, and now it has 300 million registered users. At the moment, the messenger has access not only to messaging, but to ringtones and games. And recently an English-language version was also launched, for ease of use of this messenger by Laowai - www.imqq.com (temporarily not working: error 502).
- Baidu.com 百度 Baidu
A kind of Chinese version of Google. The name 百度 hides a very interesting and romantic story. The literal translation of this word is “a hundred times,” and the word was first noticed in the poem of Xin Qiji, who lived during the Song Dynasty. In this poem, the heroine looked back hundreds of times to see her missing lover. And so, although Baidu has a romantic beginning, in fact it is a very serious search engine launched in 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu. Baidu currently contains about 740 million pages, 80 million images and 10 million files. There is also the opportunity to use 57 additional services, including Baidu Baike (a kind of Chinese Wikipedia).
- Sina.com.cn 新浪 Xinlang
An average website on Chinanet dedicated to news, sports, social issues, education, life, interesting stories from China and from other parts of the world. Of course, sports news and reports from any events predominate.
- Tianya.cn 天涯 Tianya
The top site among forum sites in China. We can keep abreast of the latest events in the life of the Chinese. Thousands of users create new topics, publish their opinions, and even ordinary people become universally known here.
- Taobao.com 淘宝 Taobao
Well, it’s simply a shame for Russian Internet users not to know this site. For those who don’t know, Taobao is an online store similar to Ebay, and only operates in China. Created under the auspices of the Alibaba group, it sells almost all types of products to more than 190 million registered users.
- Youku.com 优酷 Yuku
An analogue of Youtube, created in 2006 by Victor Kuu, ex-president of the search engine sohu.com, as a site for storing and viewing videos and movie episodes. Currently, about 1,500 television companies cooperate with this site, and already in 2009, visitors spent 229 million hours on the site.
- Kaixin001.com 开心网 Kaixin
The social network, aimed at office workers, attracts 3.5 million new users every week and is the 13th most popular on the Chinese Internet. Also known for her online games who don't let anyone go. These include, for example, “Happy Farm,” which was originally created for Facebook.
- Renren.com 人人网 Renrenwang
Same social network, has grown from a local university into an analogue of Facebook in China. The founder is considered to be Wang Xing, who also launched the Twitter clone Foufou. Here you can communicate with more than 40 million users.
- Tudou.com 土豆网 Tudou
A vegetable site, and a vegetable site because 土豆 from Chinese means “potato”. This is one of the sites dedicated to publishing video clips. He was born in 2005, and in September 2008 he launched the HD video function, which the Chinese themselves call 黑豆 or “Black Bean”.
- 163.com 网易 Wang'Yi
You've probably seen the numbers 163 in addresses. Email their friends, and this has an explanation: the 163com website is one of the ten most popular sites on the Chinese Internet and a huge number of Chinese choose it for its good, proven email service and news feed, which is more specialized in the entertainment industry.
Do you want to know which sites are popular among the Chinese? Check out the rankings based on Alexa.com.
The sites in the rating are intended for the Chinese, if you need a Chinese store adapted for the Russian user and with delivery to the Russian Federation, then this is your place.
20 best websites in China
The best search engine in China. Similar to Yandex. Contains many services: pictures, videos, music, news, games, maps and even Wikipedia. Like Yandex, it has its own programs: antivirus and browser. Due to the large number of Chinese, the search engine, unknown throughout the world, ranks 5th in popularity on the world Internet in the Alexa ranking (in practice, it may be even higher, since not every Chinese has a toolbar from Alexa).
The largest Chinese news portal. You can connect an analogue of ICQ. It ranks 8th in the global rankings.
The largest Chinese online store, an analogue of our Ozone. Unfortunately, adapted only for Chinese users. Ranked 12th in the global rankings.
News and entertainment portal. It is possible to create a free e-mail. World ranking – 13th place.
Microblogging service. Similar to Twitter. 17th place in the global ranking.
Large entertainment portal from Baidu. It is 22nd on the World Wide Web.
Chinese antivirus. There is even a Russian-language version - 360totalsecurity.com. Ranked 35th in the world rankings.
An online store where every seller, even from another country, can display their goods. Analogue of Aliexpress, only for the Chinese. 32nd place in the global ranking.
Large news and entertainment portal. Users can maintain communities and blogs, as well as use free mail. The site ranks 39th on the world Internet.
This news site has a powerful cultural and ideological influence. 48th place in the world Internet.
World and local news. The site has a Russian version - russian.news.cn. Global rating – 67.
Chinese search engine. It has traditional portal services: mail, news, maps, photos, videos, etc. World rating – 68.
Search engine from 360.com. In addition to standard services, it contains Wikipedia. Ranked 92nd in the global rankings.
This online store has a Russian-language version. It has not yet become a leader in the RuNet, apparently due to the lack of the largest assortment and not very attractive prices. 88th place in the global ranking.
Chinese version of Google. Previously, the search engine's main website was blocked in China. At the moment, Google complies with Chinese laws and operates on its territory. 58th place in the world ranking.
News on English language about China. World ranking – 93rd place.
Video hosting. Chinese equivalent of youtube.com. Ranks 109th on the world Internet.
News portal. There is a Russian version. Global rating – 117.
A large portal and community about everything. World ranking – 115th place.
The site's observer figured out the phenomenon of the Chinese analogue of YouTube - video hosting Youku. The service, created in 2006, has already surpassed YouTube in some respects, and in the future it aims to become one of the largest companies in China.
There are a huge number of sites on the Chinese Internet that are analogues of more popular worldwide services. This is largely due to the peculiarities of the PRC, as a country with a high level of censorship that limits the appearance of foreign content. That's why local entrepreneurs are trying to fill the gaps with their own products.
Youku is intended to replace YouTube, which is blocked by the Chinese government. At the same time, this video hosting service performs its task so well that it has already surpassed its eminent competitor in some indicators. For example, more than 13 billion minutes are streamed on Youku every day, which is much more compared to YouTube, which has only 3 billion.
The Chinese video portal has moved a huge number of TV series online, effectively replacing national television. And finally, he was able to gather an audience of more than 400 million people. All this was the result of boundless faith in the project of one man, who in his homeland is called the strangest businessman.
A huge audience and proper advertising allowed the producers of the series to almost completely transfer all their premieres to Youku and only after that start showing on the channels. This approach ensured permanent growth of the video portal’s audience, but did not solve all its problems, because the resource still remained unprofitable. In fact, the company lost almost $30 million in three quarters of 2010.
In order to solve financial problems, Youku, which has an audience of 150 million users, carried out an IPO that same year, which allowed it to raise $203 million. In addition, according to Victor Ku, this gave the company the opportunity to express itself in the international market and thereby diversify its content.
The bet paid off, and Youku soon struck several deals with major US video and television companies. At the same time, the video portal did not always buy American TV series or films, but received the rights to film its own versions of famous films.
This approach allowed the service to be noted by the government, which assessed the impact of the resource on the development of the film industry in China. In addition, the company has involved the authors of top videos in some of its projects. Such a non-trivial move increased traffic to the site, because everyone wanted to feel like a movie star.
The agreements concluded with large American film companies, as well as television channels, helped to significantly increase the level of profits. The benefits of this solution became especially noticeable when Youku began to be used as a platform for advertising blockbusters. Trailers for films from major Hollywood studios received up to 25 million views per day. The site’s huge audience and convenient functionality allowed a number of films to significantly increase their fees. The record holder for this indicator was the film “Jurassic World”, which, thanks to promotion on Youku, was able to collect more than $300 million in China and became one of the highest-grossing blockbusters in history.
This fully applies to music. Many studios from all over the world have realized that in order to ensure the success of an album in China, they must first post the clips on Youku. Naturally, this had a positive impact on the growth rate of the service’s audience.
In addition to world fame, 2010 brought the company a lot of different records. The service took first place in the number of views in China. Youku has become the official video provider of the Chinese version of Mozilla Firefox. In addition, the successful IPO allowed the company to end a financially poor year with a profit of 200 million yuan.
The desire to turn a huge video portal into a profitable business forced the service’s management to think about a monetization strategy. The final model was in many ways similar to its global counterparts. First of all, this can be attributed to advertising.
