Tudou
Encyclopedia
Tudou, Inc. is one of the largest video websites in People's Republic of China
, where users can upload, view and share video clip
s. Tudou went live on April 15, 2005 and by September 2007, served over 55 million videos each day.
Tudou states they are one of the world's largest bandwidth users, moving more than 1 Petabyte
per day to 7 million users. YouTube
does serve a larger number of videos per day, but since the average Tudou video is longer in duration, the total amount of minutes of video being streamed daily from Tudou is significantly larger - about 15 billion minutes vs. 3 billion for YouTube.
Though focusing on the China audience, Tudou is becoming popular with users in the world because it allows the viewer to watch a wide variety of video contents ranging from licensed episodes of television shows and movies, adding to short 10 minute clips as with YouTube.
The Shanghai
-based service uses Adobe Flash
technology to publish more than 50,000 new videos each day, including amateur content such as videoblogging and original videos, movie and TV
clips, and music videos. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos, using on-line and Windows-based upload tools.
, whom Wang met while at Bertelsmann
Media Group in China. The name Tudou is Chinese Pinyin
(Romanized Chinese) for Potato. It was previously known as Toodou.com, and changed its domain name to Tudou.com in August 2006 when that domain became available. According to CEO Wang, the name comes from the English idiom "couch potato." He stated that his goal was to move couch potatoes from the television screen to the computer screen.
Prior to Tudou, Wang lived in the United States
and returned to China to work for multi-national companies. Tudou was originally conceptualized as a video blogging company and the site launched on April 15, 2005, in its current format, several months before YouTube
.
Like many technology startups, Tudou was started on a shoestring with a raw technology team, practically in a garage. It was initially self-financed at about $100,000, then in 2005 raised a $500,000 seed round. Its first major funding round was in 2006 for $8.5 million from IDG
China, GGV Capital
(formerly Granite Global Ventures), and JAFCO Asia. Tudou's second funding was in early 2007 for $19 million and was led by Boston
-based General Catalyst Partners
and Shanghai-based Capital Today, with other existing investors participating. The fourth found funding was on April 28, 2008, for $57 million from existing investors IDG Technology Venture Investment (IDGVC), Granite Global Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, and also included a member of the Rockefeller family. The most recent funding was announced on August 5, 2010 for $50 million from the Temasek Holdings and existing investors.
, growing from 131 to 360 million video clips per week in just three months. According to a July 16, 2007, survey, 55 million video clips are viewed daily on Tudou, with an additional 20,000 new videos uploaded every 24 hours. Neilsen's measurements indicate the website averages nearly 40 million visitors per month.
According to Chinese tracking service iResearch, as of the mid-2007, Tudou has over 50% of the Chinese online video market. iResearch reported Tudou's monthly unique visitor reached 95 million as of June 2009, and 170 million as of June 2010.
China, Jafco Asia, GGV Capital, General Catalyst Partners
, Capital Today, KTB, JAIC, Cyber Agent, Venrock, Crescent Point, and Temasek Holdings
.
In August 2011, Tudou filed with the SEC to raise $174 million by offering 6 million ADSs at a price range of $28 to $30 in an initial public offering.
In December 2007, Tudou introduced videos in the H.264 format, providing higher quality and standards-based video.
In the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake
on May 12, the service of the website was suspended until May 21 due to the period of national mourning.
On September 10, 2008, Tudou received its license from SARFT.
and categorize / tag each video.
's Flash Player
. This technology allows the site to display videos with quality comparable to more established video playback technologies (such as Windows Media Player
, QuickTime
and RealPlayer
) that generally require the user to download and install a web browser
plugin in order to view video. Flash also requires a plug-in, but the Flash 7 plug-in is generally considered to be present on approximately 90% of online computers. The video can also be played back with gnash
(cannot) or VLC
. It has pixel dimensions of 320 by 240 (4:3) or 352 by 264 (16:9), depending on the aspect ratio of the source video. Videos run at 25 frames per second with a maximum data rate of 300kbit/s.
Tudou accepts uploaded videos in a variety of formats, including .WMV
, .AVI
, .MOV
, MPEG
and .MP4
.
Video can be seen in windowed mode or full screen mode; it is possible to switch the mode during the viewing of any video without reloading it because of the full-screen function of Adobe Systems
Flash Player 9.
) of video files per day, which is nearly 100Gbit/s of sustained traffic. The company uses a variety of proprietary and commercial content distribution networks (CDN
s), such as ChinaCache
to distribute videos around China.
The domain tudou.com attracted almost 10 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com
survey.
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, where users can upload, view and share video clip
Video clip
Video clips are short clips of video, usually part of a longer recording. The term is also more loosely used to mean any short video less than the length of a traditional television program.- On the Internet :...
s. Tudou went live on April 15, 2005 and by September 2007, served over 55 million videos each day.
Tudou states they are one of the world's largest bandwidth users, moving more than 1 Petabyte
Petabyte
A petabyte is a unit of information equal to one quadrillion bytes, or 1000 terabytes. The unit symbol for the petabyte is PB...
per day to 7 million users. YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
does serve a larger number of videos per day, but since the average Tudou video is longer in duration, the total amount of minutes of video being streamed daily from Tudou is significantly larger - about 15 billion minutes vs. 3 billion for YouTube.
Though focusing on the China audience, Tudou is becoming popular with users in the world because it allows the viewer to watch a wide variety of video contents ranging from licensed episodes of television shows and movies, adding to short 10 minute clips as with YouTube.
The Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
-based service uses Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
technology to publish more than 50,000 new videos each day, including amateur content such as videoblogging and original videos, movie and TV
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
clips, and music videos. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos, using on-line and Windows-based upload tools.
History
Tudou was founded by Gary Wang and Dutchman Marc van der ChijsMarc van der Chijs
Marc van der Chijs is the co-founder, with Gary Wang, of popular Chinese video sharing website Tudou.com.-Career:...
, whom Wang met while at Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann AG is a multinational media corporation founded in 1835, based in Gütersloh, Germany. The company operates in 63 countries and employs 102,983 workers , which makes it the most international media corporation in the world. In 2008 the company reported a €16.118 billion consolidated...
Media Group in China. The name Tudou is Chinese Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
(Romanized Chinese) for Potato. It was previously known as Toodou.com, and changed its domain name to Tudou.com in August 2006 when that domain became available. According to CEO Wang, the name comes from the English idiom "couch potato." He stated that his goal was to move couch potatoes from the television screen to the computer screen.
Prior to Tudou, Wang lived in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and returned to China to work for multi-national companies. Tudou was originally conceptualized as a video blogging company and the site launched on April 15, 2005, in its current format, several months before YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.
Like many technology startups, Tudou was started on a shoestring with a raw technology team, practically in a garage. It was initially self-financed at about $100,000, then in 2005 raised a $500,000 seed round. Its first major funding round was in 2006 for $8.5 million from IDG
IDG
International Data Group is a technology media, research, event management, and venture capital organization.IDG evolved from International Data Corporation which was formed in 1964 in Newtonville, Massachusetts, by Patrick Joseph McGovern and a friend, Fred Kirch...
China, GGV Capital
GGV Capital
GGV Capital is a venture capital firm focused on expansion stage investments in the US and Asia. The firm invests across a range of sectors in information technology, services and healthcare, as well as the consumer growth sector in China.GGV Capital, which was founded as Granite Global Ventures...
(formerly Granite Global Ventures), and JAFCO Asia. Tudou's second funding was in early 2007 for $19 million and was led by Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
-based General Catalyst Partners
General Catalyst Partners
General Catalyst Partners is a private equity firm focused on venture capital investments in early stage technology-based companies including software, infrastructure software and applied technology businesses. The firm has also includes a growth capital team that focuses on later stage...
and Shanghai-based Capital Today, with other existing investors participating. The fourth found funding was on April 28, 2008, for $57 million from existing investors IDG Technology Venture Investment (IDGVC), Granite Global Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, and also included a member of the Rockefeller family. The most recent funding was announced on August 5, 2010 for $50 million from the Temasek Holdings and existing investors.
Rapid Growth
During the summer of 2007, Nielsen/NetRatings reported that Tudou was one of the fastest growing websites on the WebWorld Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, growing from 131 to 360 million video clips per week in just three months. According to a July 16, 2007, survey, 55 million video clips are viewed daily on Tudou, with an additional 20,000 new videos uploaded every 24 hours. Neilsen's measurements indicate the website averages nearly 40 million visitors per month.
According to Chinese tracking service iResearch, as of the mid-2007, Tudou has over 50% of the Chinese online video market. iResearch reported Tudou's monthly unique visitor reached 95 million as of June 2009, and 170 million as of June 2010.
Media Recognition
Tudou has been covered in both the Chinese and Western press, including in the New York Times, Business Week, South China Morning Post, Dow Jones MarketWatch, and others.Funding
Tudou completed its financial fund series A to E between year 2005 to 2010 in November 2005, April 2006, April 2007, April 2008, and August 2010 respectively. A total of US$135 millions were raised from a roster of venture capital organizations such as IDG VenturesIDG Ventures
IDG Ventures is a global family of venture funds with approximately $6.8 billion under management. All of the funds were originally sole-source-funded by International Data Group.The first fund was created by IDG in 1996 and was located in San Francisco...
China, Jafco Asia, GGV Capital, General Catalyst Partners
General Catalyst Partners
General Catalyst Partners is a private equity firm focused on venture capital investments in early stage technology-based companies including software, infrastructure software and applied technology businesses. The firm has also includes a growth capital team that focuses on later stage...
, Capital Today, KTB, JAIC, Cyber Agent, Venrock, Crescent Point, and Temasek Holdings
Temasek Holdings
Temasek Holdings is an investment company owned by the government of Singapore. With an international staff of 380 people, it manages a portfolio of about S$193 billion at end of March 2011, focused primarily in Asia...
.
In August 2011, Tudou filed with the SEC to raise $174 million by offering 6 million ADSs at a price range of $28 to $30 in an initial public offering.
Recent events
In July 2007, Tudou introduced one of the world's first large-scale video advertising systems for video sites, several months ahead of YouTube. In late September 2007, Intel and Tudou announced a partnership to explore wireless video sharing technologies and video applications for mobile devices. Tudou also agreed to increase its use of Intel CPUs in its rapidly growing video encoder server farms. Intel will also promote its products through the Tudou advertising system.In December 2007, Tudou introduced videos in the H.264 format, providing higher quality and standards-based video.
In the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake
2008 Sichuan earthquake
The 2008 Sichuan earthquake or the Great Sichuan Earthquake was a deadly earthquake that measured at 8.0 Msand 7.9 Mw occurred at 14:28:01 CST...
on May 12, the service of the website was suspended until May 21 due to the period of national mourning.
On September 10, 2008, Tudou received its license from SARFT.
Copyright
A portion of Tudou's content comes from commercial sources and is not user-generated. The company says that the Chinese often go to Tudou for TV-like saq-media, instead of using their televisions. Starting 2008 Tudou launched licensed content acquisition and partnership programs aggregating selective premium professional contents. Nevertheless, Tudou still comes under criticism for its disregard of some copyright policies. Tudou follows copyright practices in accordance with the DMCA Digital Millennium Copyright Act as Youtube.Video Review
Tudou's in-house reviewers watch, approve, and categorize all uploaded videos. The reviewers screen for inappropriate content such as pornographyPornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
and categorize / tag each video.
Video format
Tudou's video playback technology is based on MacromediaMacromedia
Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...
's Flash Player
Adobe Flash Player
The Adobe Flash Player is software for viewing multimedia, Rich Internet Applications and streaming video and audio, on a computer web browser or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other...
. This technology allows the site to display videos with quality comparable to more established video playback technologies (such as Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...
, QuickTime
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
and RealPlayer
RealPlayer
RealPlayer is a cross-platform media player by RealNetworks that plays a number of multimedia formats including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, and multiple versions of proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats.-History:...
) that generally require the user to download and install a web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
plugin in order to view video. Flash also requires a plug-in, but the Flash 7 plug-in is generally considered to be present on approximately 90% of online computers. The video can also be played back with gnash
Gnash
Gnash is a media player for playing SWF files. Gnash is available both as a standalone player for desktop computers and embedded device, as well as a plugin for several browsers. It is part of the GNU Project and is a Free and open-source alternative to Adobe Flash Player...
(cannot) or VLC
VLC media player
VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
. It has pixel dimensions of 320 by 240 (4:3) or 352 by 264 (16:9), depending on the aspect ratio of the source video. Videos run at 25 frames per second with a maximum data rate of 300kbit/s.
Tudou accepts uploaded videos in a variety of formats, including .WMV
Windows Media Video
'Windows Media Video is a video compression format for several proprietary codecs developed by Microsoft. The original video format, known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other formats, such as WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater...
, .AVI
Audio Video Interleave
Audio Video Interleave , known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback...
, .MOV
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
, MPEG
Moving Picture Experts Group
The Moving Picture Experts Group is a working group of experts that was formed by ISO and IEC to set standards for audio and video compression and transmission. It was established in 1988 by the initiative of Hiroshi Yasuda and Leonardo Chiariglione, who has been from the beginning the Chairman...
and .MP4
MPEG-4 Part 14
MPEG-4 Part 14 or MP4 is a multimedia container format standard specified as a part of MPEG-4. It is most commonly used to store digital video and digital audio streams, especially those defined by MPEG, but can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images...
.
Video can be seen in windowed mode or full screen mode; it is possible to switch the mode during the viewing of any video without reloading it because of the full-screen function of Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
Flash Player 9.
Bandwidth
Tudou reports that it's one of the world's largest bandwidth users, sending over 1PB (PetabytePetabyte
A petabyte is a unit of information equal to one quadrillion bytes, or 1000 terabytes. The unit symbol for the petabyte is PB...
) of video files per day, which is nearly 100Gbit/s of sustained traffic. The company uses a variety of proprietary and commercial content distribution networks (CDN
Content Delivery Network
A content delivery network or content distribution network is a system of computers containing copies of data placed at various nodes of a network....
s), such as ChinaCache
Chinacache
ChinaCache is a content delivery, streaming media, cloud computing service provider in China. It began operating in 2000. In 2009, ChinaCache account for 53% market share in terms of revenue in 2009, according to iResearch Consulting Group...
to distribute videos around China.
The domain tudou.com attracted almost 10 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com
Compete.com
Compete.com is a web traffic analysis service of Compete, Inc. which operates in the United States and publishes the approximate number of global visitors to the top 1,000,000 web sites in the world...
survey.
See also
- 56.com56.com56.com is one of the largest video sharing websites in China, where users can upload, view and share video clips.The domain 56.com attracted at least 3.2 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com survey....
- Alternative mediaAlternative mediaAlternative media are media which provide alternative information to the mainstream media in a given context, whether the mainstream media are commercial, publicly supported, or government-owned...
- Comparison of video servicesComparison of video servicesThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable video hosting services. Please see the individual products' articles for further information...
- List of Internet phenomena
- User-generated contentUser-generated contentUser generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...
- Viral videoViral videoA viral video is one that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email...
- Youku