Gary Wang, the founder of China’s largest online video site Tudou.com, now plans to launch a Beijing-based animated film studio that the Wall Street Journal calls “China’s answer to Pixar” on April 1. Wang says he has already secured “tens of millions of dollars” in funding from an undisclosed international group of investors–and he’s looking to staff his studio with experts from the U.S. so his… → Read More
A rocky financial climate isn’t stopping this IPO—Chinese online video site Tudou has started trading on the NASDAQ this morning under the symbol ‘TUDO.’ Last night, Tudou priced its shares $29 a piece, raising $174 million in the offering. This morning, Tudou opened 13 percent below its pricing at $25.11 per share, giving the company a valuation of $2.8 billion (as opposed to $3.2 billion at… → Read More
Bill Bishop, an investor and consultant based in Beijing, joined me via Skype to talk about this white-hot Chinese Interent IPO market, that’s even welcoming unprofitable companies into the Nasdaq. “It’s been a crazy couple months, and it looks like it will be crazier through Christmas,” he says. “The goldrush is back.”
One of the most interesting corners of that goldrush is online video. Between… → Read More
Yes, China is taking over the world. Or at least the Internet. No, this is not like the WE’LL-ALL-BE-WORKING-FOR-JAPAN-oh-nevermind scare of the 1980s. Why? Because China has more than 1 billion people. It already represents the largest online audience in the world and is less than 30% penetrated and has Internet spending per capita that’s less than one-third of the United States.
That means two… → Read More
Back in March I thought that Google pulling out of China would hurt Google’s Chinese employees and shareholders more than anyone. The search engine was a distant number two in the market to Baidu, and many of the people already using Google in China, I assumed, were doing so through VPNs anyway, meaning the government blocking it wouldn’t immediately change much in terms of users’… → Read More
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