User Generated Content China

Inspired by the popularity of Youtube, numerous startups want to grasp the opportunities in online video market.

Trend description

Chinese Youth have discovered a means of expression through user generated content on the Web. They have flooded foreign services such as YouTube with funny videos and snapshots of their lives. This has inspired numerous startups to offer uniquely Chinese video portals.

Cases
Yoqoo

Yoqoo has almost all the features that Youtube has, such upload, tag and share videos, create and join groups to make contacts with other users, browser and subscribe video channels, use html snippets to embed videos on blogs or websites. One of its special features is that it allow any user to set a topic for video contest, then he and other users can upload videos consistent with that topic for users rating to win the contest.

Toodou

Toodou, a popular video portal and podcasting service in China, has launched its advertising services. Podcasters of Toodou can apply and choose to add advertisement to their original video podcasts. Audiences of those podcasts will watch an advertisement at the beginning of the video. The revenue is shared between Toodou and podcasters. Recently Toodou.com switched over to become Tudou.com

WangYou

WangYou.com is the chinese equivalent of Myspace. Though a cross-media platform, the company focuses on promoting user-generated content (UGC) and allows users to create, share, organize and distribute all kinds of multimedia files (from personal diaries to home movies). Recently, the company has started a program to access several million university students across the country with a music radio show produced purely based on content generated by users that boasts a burgeoning user base of over 4 million 13-26 year olds and more than 10 million daily page views. The show will be customized to air via the schools’ own broadcasting stations several times a week.

Yahoo User Generated Content Campaign

To draw a distinction between it and market-leading search engines google.com.cn (Google) and baidu.com (Baidu), yahoo.com.cn in January 2006 began offering and advanced channel for online searching on its homepage. It marks the first time on the Chinese mainland that a Website promotion will be so closely linked with user generated entertainment directed at a young audience. The new promotion may soon allow the cinematic acting aspirations of some young men and women to come true. Yahoo has invited three famous Chinese directors/producers to create three short video advertisements about Yahoo. Three lucky “promising stars” will be selected to perform in the advertisements. Young men and women, 16 years old or older, from home or abroad, are welcome to participate in the online event by logging on to http://sostar.yahoo.com.cn. At the site, three groups of contestants will respond to the three directors and their unique requirements. Each participant is allowed participate in one group only, where the contestant may upload photos and personal information. At the end of February 2006, 150 candidates from the three groups had been chosen online. In March, they are expected to gather in Beijing to compete, with their performances recorded in digital video. The 36 candidates for the next round will also be selected online, based on videos put online at: http://sostar.yahoo.com.cn. The last round of competition involving the three directors and nine finalists, will be held in a studio and may be broadcast via television, but all the other rounds will take place online and the online audience will be able to participate by voting for their favourites.

Trend impact

Though some of China’s video sharing site have managed to raise venture capital, it is not easy for them to build up the community for user generated content. And it would also be difficult for them to find a viable business model in Chinese internet market.

Links

http://wangyou.com/
http://www.tudou.com/
http://www.yogoo.com/index
http://cn.yahoo.com/

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