This list is now being updated here: Updated China video website list.
Danwei is trying to put together a list of all the video sharing websites in China, which have not decreased in number since Google bought Youtube for 1.6 billion dollars.
Below is a list of Chinese video websites, with brief annotations. Please correct any errors or omissions in the comments if you are interested in this subject.
This list is being updated as new information comes to us.
Video hosting and sharing websites
Apparently China’s first video sharing site, Tudou already has enough funding to weather the coming storms.
Also well-funded, Rox has been doing online video and Internet TV technology for quite some time.
Very similar in layout and functions to Youtube, loads fast in Beijing.
If you listen to hip hop and read literary theory, you may find the name amusing.
A Danwei TV episode of Sexy Beijing is on this website, in two different uploads, one from Danwei, one from someone else (1, 2). Adding viewing stats for both uploads, 56.com says that the episode has been viewed nearly four hundred thousand times. But that’s all we know about the site.
Not You Tube but Yo Qoo.
With its name referencing Korean citizen journalism website OhmyNews (English site here), and copy on the website that encourages users to go out and act like journalists and editors, this website is is bound to be interesting if it can keep going.
Has the feel of a Chinese BBS or Internet forum, which might make it a winner in this market.
Also very Youtube, but they are producing their own TV style programs (here is an interview with “Yangzhou’s bus beauty“).
Requires software download to view videos; this site looks like a Chinese BBS.
Billing itself as China’s “first entertainment interactive portal”. It has active an BBS section, and offers video and photo uploads as well as news and other traditional portal functions.
Umee hosts videos and also allows users to search other video websites and allows users to watch those videos on the UUme page.
From Kaiser: “UUme, by the way, is owned by Oak Pacific Interactive, which also owns Mopcom. Oak’s capo di tutti capi, Joseph Chen, is said to have gutted the size of the team working on UUme after learning that there are some 400 video sharing sites in China.”
Uume.com has a similar URL but appears to be unconnected with Uume, and does not seem to function.
From Kaiser: “It has some pretty strong backers and a founder with a good pedigree (Baidu, Tengxun, Xunlei).”
Mojiti has launched Chinese and English versions of its site which does not host video, but allows users to make collections of videos on other video sites, and to search other user collections and video sites.
After seeing this post, Mojiti founder Eric Feng wrote to Danwei and explained: “Our mission at Mojiti is to help users tell their own stories with any online video. We’re not a video search engine – instead, we want to help users personalize video to create a more engaging viewing experience.”
Another Youtube-like site with added functions: Biku offers video file downloads for MP3 players and mobile phones, although we could not get this function to work after a brief trial.
A video sharing website with a BBS feel, OuOu has a large section of Flash animations.
Lots of webcam videos of dancing, lip synching girls. The website has links to different servers for different ADSL networks to offer faster loading times.
The name is a reference to the Steamed Bun spoof of Chen Kaige’s movie that made Hu Ge and the word e gao (ζΆζ – spoofing) popular in China. The website’s tagline is “The first choice for short original videos”.
Video sharing website that only works on Internet Explorer, and requires a software download.
Supposedly a video sharing site, this would not load at all (Nov 22), but is apparently the same thing as
Maidee which was working.
Video search
Mojiti and Uume.com let users search other video websites for content. Neither of them is as slick and easy to use as the new U.S. based site Blinkx.
Internet TV websites
Offers movies and TV shows on a pay per download basis.
It seems to be free, but requires software download. The site also offers Mp4s for download, as well as mobile phones formats.
China.com’s new video play; professionally produced and user generated content.
In other non broadcast video news:
Forbes has published an AFP report titled China IPTV movie deal signals growing viability of download model – Macquarie. Excerpt:
An IPTV movie licensing deal between major studios and Shanghai Media Group unit Best TV marks a shift to a download model, with the economics and encryption protections of this distribution channel apparently becoming more acceptable to Hollywood, a Macquarie Research Equities analyst said.
Best TV signed deals with six global media groups involving on-demand access to their movies, the official Shanghai Securities News reported today.
The agreement will give Best TV subscribers in China access to the movie databases of the Warner, Sony/Columbia, Fox, Disney/Buena Vista, Paramount and Universal studios, to be available by the first quarter of 2007 at the latest, the report said.
And then there’s this, from Interfax: China Mobile to focus on trans-media platform.