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August 13th, 2010 
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 higher-ranking Koo said the new finances will go toward expanding its offerings of licensed professional video and subject made just 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 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 recording and producing home videos is newer here. “Online videos in China are based more on professional, long-form video than in the U.S. due to…the proportional 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 receipts this year to master 200 million yuan ($29 million).
Mr. Koo said Youku will also invest more in mobile video engineering in an effort to take advantage of growing use of China’s freshly launched third-generation mobile technology, which allows high-speed data services like streaming video.
Youku, Tudou and other Chinese video Web sites also have been known to carry pirated content uploaded by their users, like unlicensed Online TV shows and films. Mr. Koo said the company works with the Motion Picture Association of America and employs an realization technology that will allow it to filter out this content at the request of the right ways 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 prosecute in china.
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