Youku Inc., formerly Youku.com Inc., doing business as Youku (simplified Chinese: 优 优; traditional Chinese: 优优; pinyin: yōukù; literally: "excellent (and) cool"),] is a video hosting service based in China. Youku has its headquarters on the fifth floor of Sinosteel Plaza in Haidian District, Be ijing. On March 12, 2012, Youku reached an agreement to acquire Tudou in a stock-for-stoc k transaction, the new entity being named Youku Tudou Inc. It has more than 500 mil lion active users. 1 History Youku was founded by Victor Koo.former President of Chinese Internet portal Sohu. Initial funding for the site came from 1Verge, a fund raised by Koo. A beta version of the site was launched with limited geographic reach in June 2006, and the website wa s formally launched in December 2006. In 2007, the company received $25 million in funding from venture capitalists. In December 2009, the company announced that it h ad raised a total of $110 million in private equity funding. Major investors include Br ookside (Bain) Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, Maverick Capital, and Chengwei Ventur es. The company initially emphasized user-generated content but has since shifted its foc us to professionally produced videos licensed from over 1,500 content partners. As of January 2010, Youku.com was ranked #1 in the Chinese Internet video sector a ccording to Internet metrics provider CR-Nielsen,(keeping in mind that YouTube is b anned in China). In 2008, Youku partnered with Myspace in China.Later that year, Yo uku became the sole online video provider embedded in the China Edition of popular web browser Mozilla Firefox. In January 2010, Youku and competitor Tudou announced the creation of a video broa dcasting exchange network, under which Youku and Tudou will cross-license professi onally produced video content. Youku recorded gross revenues of 200 million RMB in 2009. On December 8, 2010, Youku was listed at the New York Stock Exchange for its first time. The stock closed at $33.44 on its first day of trading giving the company a mark et capitalization of approximately $3.3 billion. For the first 9 months of 2010 Youku r eported revenue of $35.1 million and recorded a loss of $25 million during this period. YouKu.com seems to have no relation to the Chinese domain youku.cn. Victor Koo was once an employee of Bain & Company, one of the most prominent m anagement consulting firms in the world. Youku permits users to upload videos of arbitrary length. Youku has partnered with o ver 1,500 license holders, including television stations, distributors, and film and TV production companies in China that regularly upload media content on the site. Youku allows the Government of China to check for inappropriate or offensive video s (see Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China). Youku's video library includes many full-length films and TV episodes. Viewers from around the world can see these films on Youku for free, though often with Chinese su btitles. Other popular sites such as YouTube cannot display this content because of co pyright restrictions, but these laws either do not exist in China or are poorly enforced, enabling Youku to broadcast copyrighted content from their website without license. I n January 2010, Youku implemented a digital fingerprinting technology intended to el iminate copyright infringing content on the site. Some Youku videos are blocked to international IP addresses because of licensing iss ues. 2 Compared youku is China playing youtube 3 product Video Library Youku in the "world is watching," the objectives and "fast is king" product concept, t o create the most complete, fastest, best video database, to lead the trend of Internet c ulture video era. Allowing users to understand the trend of video culture for the first ti me, the combination of the ultra-popular video list to create massive fine library. Video Category Hot, original, movies, television, sports, music, games, animation, eight professional channels to achieve vertical directional search to help users quickly find the direction of interest. Video Leaderboard The first time access to the most popular video, viewing each category by search rank ing first; user preferences Watch target list based on interest, the wonderful presenting instantly. My USB Have my video, my playlist, I subscribe to, my favorites, my PK ring, my club, and m y friends and other groups, personalized usage eleven save, highlight the 2.0 significa nce, here it is Youku users own private space. Platform Community Enjoy the wonderful vision in the interaction, expand interpersonal communication n etworks, because video and interactive, allowing network video become everyone livi ng in the mainstream of life and entertainment; video enthusiasts to get to know the cl ub, to flex its muscles in the PK ring, than the gifted than cool, more than a bit, Youk u is your stage. Youku shoot-off When the video application gushing out, China's Internet video era, a new culture sta nd out, a new group was born. Their names, called the shoot-off. Shoot off Shoot-off, sharers and disseminators of information, the witness Trolltech event; they are positive, and the sun, sharp thinking, advocating thinking, they represent the cutti ng-edge of today's Internet user groups, it was in 2007 in the field of video sharing m ost dazzling star. Original Union Youku large-scale original alliance, with a large number loyal to the original, creative video dreamer, each of them Individuals have stuck to their love of video clips, adhere to the original dream, their video culture of loyalty to the Youku conveying a steady stream of original video. 4 Why we are using Because they can not access youtube in China so youku become China's largest video site 5Future Youku and potatoes after the merger can better solve copyright issues, copyright issue s is a huge and difficult problem restricting China to the world of video sites Youku future not only to solve the problem of copyright video site, but also highlight Features (original) Original video movie network drama, etc.