Youku is one of China's leading video sharing websites and the first brand in China's Internet video industry. Using the phrase, "Speed wins" as its philosophy, Youku has attached great importance to the user's experience and has been making efforts to improve its service strategy. Its product features of "Rapid Playing, Rapid Release, Rapid Search" have satisfied the constant growing, diversified and interactive demand of the users. This makes it possible to become a dominant power among China's video sharing websites.
In 2007, Youku first raised the slogan of, "Video reporter is everywhere", and advocated that "everyone can record video", which has created a cultural wave of video creation among the people. Youku has become a primary source among Internet video recorders.
Since its formal operation on December 21, 2006, Youku has been leading China's video industry, and has been developing very rapidly. According to 2007 (first half year) of China's Internet Survey Report released in July 2007 by Chinese Internet Association, Youku was ahead of other similar websites in brand awareness.
On August 29, 2007, Youku was listed among the "Red Herring 100 Asia 2007", and became China's only video sharing website which has won such a special honor.
In December of 2007, the Nielsen Company, a world renowned survey organization, announced that Youku's daily video playing had first surpassed 100 million times and its daily independent visiting users had surpassed 12 million. By July 2008, Youku had completed a world-class risk financing and capital & stock increase with a total of $80 million. It involved five investment institutions, including Brookside Capital under the umbrella of Bain Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, which has the longest history in the Silicon Valley, Farallon Capital and Maverick Capital, one of the largest investment fund in the world, and Chengwei Ventures, China's only evergreen fund.
With this capital support, Youku will definitely witness larger scale development, perfect the Internet application in the era of videos and provide the highest-quality services for users to browse, search, create and share videos.
