omniture

Sohu.com Enters into Online Video Strategic Cooperation with Youku.com

YOUKU.com
2007-11-01 15:58 1995


BEIJING, Nov. 1 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -– Sohu.com Inc. (Nasdaq: SOHU), China's leading online media, communications, search, mobile value-added services and online gaming company and Youku.com, China's leading online video website, announced today that they entered into strategic cooperation to jointly foster the development of the online video industry in China and to promote video-based citizen journalism and user generated content among Chinese online users.

Youku.com and Sohu.com will work together in a variety of areas as related to online video, including content, product and marketing. The basis of this cooperation is the fast video streaming user experience based on technology developed by Youku.com and the complementary video content offered by the two websites. Youku's content focus in hot topics and user generated content has developed a strong user base, including star users who record socially responsible online video content such as first-hand accounts of current events. In comparison, Sohu's content focus in online video has been in the areas of sports and entertainment. Together, the two companies will develop a co-branded user generated video channel on Sohu.com and promote cooperation content on both websites.

Mr. Victor Koo, CEO of Youku.com, commented on this cooperation, "As the former President of Sohu.com, I am pleased to see Sohu's strong growth momentum in recent years and I would like to express my warmest congratulations to Youku.com's new strategic partner. Being very involved in Sohu's application as official sponsor of Internet Content Service (ICS) for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games earlier, I am excited to work with Sohu and to observe the company's on-going success next year. This strategic cooperation between Youku and Sohu is a natural result given the history and chemistry between our management teams."

At the same time, Mr. Koo expressed that this cooperation with Sohu.com is another successful example of Youku's partnership strategy with leading properties in the Chinese internet space. Previously, Youku.com formed a strategic partnership with Baidu.com, the leading search engine in China. Youku.com also provides exclusive game video support to Shanda, the Nasdaq-listed online game operator in China.

Mr. Gong Yu, COO of Sohu.com said, "The cooperation with Youku.com allows our users to watch high quality broadband content on Sohu.com and to easily share video-based user generated content on Youku.com. Our users will have the opportunity to show their creativity and imagination by capturing and sharing interesting moments in their daily lives and to record videos related to current events. The strategic partnership between Sohu and Youku will provide a new experience to our users and a new model of cooperation in the growing online video space in China."

About Youku.com

Youku.com ( http://www.YOUKU.com )is a leading video sharing website and premier online video brand in China. It is one of the top destinations for people to watch and share short-form videos in Greater China. YOUKU was founded by Victor Koo, former President of Sohu.com (Nasdaq: SOHU), a leading Internet portal in China.

Youku is the fastest growing online video site in China since its beta launch in June 2006. It features the fastest video streaming speed, fastest video upload response and search for Internet users in China. Youku.com was named as "Red Herring 100 Asia" award winner for 2007, and also ranked #1 in the video sharing category according to the China Internet Society survey in July, 2007.

As of December 2006, YOUKU.com has successfully completed 2 rounds of venture financing of US$15 million in total, including financing from three world-class investment institutions: Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital and Chengwei Ventures.

About SOHU.com

Sohu.com Inc. (Nasdaq: SOHU) is China's premier online brand and indispensable to the daily life of millions of Chinese, providing a network of web properties and community based/web 2.0 products which offer the vast Sohu user community a broad array of choices regarding information, entertainment and communication. Sohu has built one of the most comprehensive matrices of Chinese language web properties and proprietary search engines, consisting of seven leading web properties.

Source: YOUKU.com
collection