China’s Leading Video Site Joins in the Nation’s Grief
BEIJING, June 13 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- As China mourned the 1st month anniversary of the tragic Wenchuan Earthquake of May 12, Youku.com -- China’s leading Internet video site -- proved its ability to bring the people of China together in somber grief, in selfless charity, and in resilient optimism over the past month.
During the three days of official mourning mandated by China’s State Council from May 19 to May 21, Youku’s tens of millions of users actively joined in together to express their profound condolences, grieving for the losses endured by their compatriots. Youku’s team transformed the entire site, from its home page to every single content page, so that beginning on the morning of the 19th, all of Youku was in an appropriate state of mourning. After a period of intense preparation, the "Official Wenchuan Compatriots Video Earthquake Memorial” was posted online. That morning, the lead video was titled “Flags at Half Mast in Tiananmen in Memory of the Disaster Victims.”
After the three-minute silence that began at 2:28 PM, exactly one week after the quake of May 12, the site carried the video, “Silent Grief: 1.3 Billion Reflect Amidst Tears on This Moment,” followed by the video “Convulsion in Tiananmen Square: Patriotic Shouts Follow Solemn Silence.”
In one 90-minute period, netizens watched 240,000 videos -- a record since the founding of Youku.com. In the immediate aftermath of the moment of silence, video uploads began to pour in from Beijing, from Shanghai, from the central heartland to the desert Northwest, from the mountains of the Southwest to the industrial East and the prosperous South, from remote Tibet and elsewhere. In just 10 minutes more than 100 videos, many of them extremely stirring, had been uploaded. The video “Mourning in Tiananmen Square,” shot by a Youku user named Kachacha, was watched over 2 million times, was shared on the Internet by over 10,000 netizens, and was widely regarded as the most moving of the many videos shot in Tiananmen that day.
In order to better understand the conditions after the quake and the progress of rebuilding, a group of Youku “paike (citizen video)” users rushed to Sichuan. There they have had front-line access to the areas affected by the disaster, and spoken face to face with the people hardest hit by the quake. Their personal, up-close look at the human face of disaster needs to be seen by netizens across the nation. And people at home can respond too by giving much-needed support and encouragement to these brave online video users and, more importantly, to those who have lost so much in this calamity.
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.com is the fastest growing online video site in China since its official launch in December 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 March 2008.
For more information, please contact:
Karen Chen
Tel: +86-10-5885-1881 x8206
Mobile: +86-135-0125-2100
Email: chenying@youku.com
Alex Stanton
Stanton Crenshaw Communications
Tel: +1-212-780-0701
Email: alex@stantoncrenshaw.com
