

A Chinese YouTube Disappears, Along With Millions Of Western Dollars. Next? - pakafka
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/the-strange-disappearance-of-a-chinese-youtube

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cglee
Rumor has it 56 simply burned through their funding and is using the
government as a nice excuse to close shop. Someone wise once said something to
the effect of: Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.

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hugh
Surely when you're dealing with the Chinese censorship authorities,
attributing everything to malice is usually a pretty reasonable approach?

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esja
Paraphrasing Grey's Law... sufficiently advanced stupidity is
indistinguishable from malice.

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chinafounder
I have some brief contact with the VC industry China, and almost anyone with
money that I've met is basically just thrusting it at whatever seems hot
overseas. The focus is on bringing companies to market (quickly) rather than
trying to build sustainable businesses with competitive advantage in their
field.

Losing cash on deals like this is great if it forces the VC industry to look
for non me-too investments that actually deliver value. I'd prefer not to have
the field cluttered with investors who don't know the difference between ren
and ru. Will waste less of my time when/if I ever need funding.

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nickb
I did some searching today and it appears that Chinese advertising market is
third biggest in the World ($60Billion
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=238595> ) so they should have been able
to bring some revenue in. And if they disappeared and never told their
investors because they ran out of money, they could have went back to them and
asked for more... so that theory doesn't make much sense to me.

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prakash
While the ad markets globally are quite big, the number of videos ads are a
tiny portion of that due to lack of inventory, content providers not having
the tools to create video ads, different websites requiring different formats
& sizes of video ads, and hence a lot of content is not monetizable.

The IAB recently introduced standard for video ads, that with an understanding
of how lucrative video ads in terms of CPM's, and with measurable analytics
and tools, the video ad market should increase substantially.

User generated ads currently have very low CPM's compared to content show by
the ABC's, NBC's, Hulu, etc.

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josefresco
Do the Chinese video surfers click more ads than the YouTube audience? With
all the talk lately about YT having trouble making money, or rather Google
having trouble making /enough/ money with YT, how is it that all these clones
are getting so much VC?

Is the speculation wrong or is the market different in the far east?

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cglee
I can't answer your direct question, but if you're trying to infer whether the
Chinese video sites are profitable or not, I can say that I've heard they are
all losing money at the moment and the general strategy seems to be a war of
attrition.

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paulleviss
I have closely monitored the Chinese Cyber laws from past couple of years.I
agree with you.They want every thing go as per their benefit and as per their
wish.

