The Chinese YouTube: Tudou the pirate potato net
May 13th, 2007 by MarkI haven’t written about Tudou.com sooner because I figured it was old news, but at the Beer Factory meet-up, David, Todd, and some other Taiwan bloggers told me they hadn’t heard of Tudou.com. I guess the Taiwan websphere and the mainland websphere really are cut off from each other. So, here it is: Tudou is a copy of YouTube done Chinese-style. YouTube has plenty of copyrighted materials, but there’s at least the appearance that they don’t allow them. Tudou, on the other hand has things you’d never see on YouTube- things like all the Star Wars movies streamed back-to-back, Friends episodes, and a ton of other movies and TV programs. It’s amazing. It’s like Tudou has no fear of Hollywood, whatsoever.
Friends on tudou Hosted on ZooomrNotes:
[1] 土豆网 (tu2dou4 wang3) means “Potato net”
[2] You vote up videos by clicking on the orange button with 挖 (wa1), which means “dig”. Remind you of anything?
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May 14th, 2007 at 9:04 am
I love explaining Tudou to friends who aren’t total Asia/China dorks.
Are potatoes particularly auspicious here? Tudou probably sounds like something else that is good, which I don’t know yet.
(I am going go to see what is at http://www.xigua.com right now)
May 14th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Hmm… nothing there yet. It looks like http://kugua.com/ is on the way, though.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Thanks for the link Mark… I have a bad feeling I am going to have trouble limiting my usage.
May 14th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
the fact that it has Friends is reason enough never to visit that site. If it has ‘Dangermouse’ though…
May 17th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Rick has been convering this for a while, first on his regular blog, and now on his dedicated piracy RSS blog.
May 18th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Yeah. Actually, Rick’s blog is where I first saw that link to the Star Wars movies. As I said, though, none of my Taiwan blogger friends had even heard of Tudou. It’s kind of like when I first analyzed Baidu, none of my friends here had heard of it. We’re not just living on a separate island in Taiwan… it’s like a separate world!
May 20th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Why would anyone want to watch Star Wars on a 320X240 resolution player? I guess it’s better then nothing.
May 28th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Yeah, tudou is pretty cool.
But to tell the truth, I prefer youku.com.
They used to be yooqu.com, but changed for some strange reason.
In any case, they run a little smoother than tudou, and their selection is just as deep.
I wrote a quick summary of 5 Chinese Video sites here. And, as Alex said, my “Stolen Media” site is here.
And there’s a great summary of Chinese Video sites on Danwei.com as well, which covers all the major players on the Chinese Video sharing scene.
June 12th, 2007 at 12:40 am
[...] law in China? Try again, at least in the case of Tudou.com (literal translation: potatoe net): Tudou is a copy of YouTube [...]
June 30th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
would like to veiw in english
July 9th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
hen hao¬
June 9th, 2008 at 10:27 am
[...] law in China? Try again, at least in the case of Tudou.com (literal translation: potatoe net): Tudou is a copy of YouTube [...]