Marc van der Chijs

Marc van der Chijs, Tudou’s co-founder, wrote, "As far as we know, this [is] the largest round of funding ever for a Chinese internet company.  In total Tudou has raised USD 85 million over the past 3 years."

Tudou appears ready to do some fairly significant things with its latest lump of cash.  van der Chijs’s biggest hint related to "just compensation" for content creators, yet a mention of targeting should intrigue advertisers, and users won’t mind increased accessibility.

In any event, it doesn’t look like Tudou will be pursuing a fifth round of funding (or an IPO) anytime soon.  van der Chijs apparently turned down some offers in order to not get greedy.

Lastly, van der Chijs chose not to share the names of current investors, but Rafat Ali identifies them as "IDG Technology Venture Investment (IDGVC), Granite Global Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, and also . . . a member of the Rockefeller family."

A report from Sohu IT claims the site was told to shutdown because it was hosting pornographic content along with other illegal content. Tudou, which means potato in Chinese, has been operational since the shutdown reports first emerged.

Chinese reporters and bloggers say they are not quite sure what’s happening with Todou. The company is maintaining that is has not received a shutdown order.

Jeremy Goldkorn of  Danwei writes, "Your correspondent is inclined to think this is just a shake down for penalty fees, and a shot across the bows of all the video sites to warn them that big brother SARFT is watching."

He adds, "Tudou is one of the least salacious video hosts out there. Lots of the smaller ones seem to be trying to compete by pushing the boundaries of what’s permitted.
Copyright infringement’s a different story, but there again, Tudou is no worse than any of the others."
 

The money comes from General Catalyst Partners and Highland Capital Partners, according to Om Malik.  General Catalyst gave money to Tudou, a Chinese video-sharing site, just last week – these guys know how to branch out.  And fittingly enough, Malik says that the Going.com money is earmarked “for expansion into new cities.”

There’s no word yet as to where the expansion will take place.  The Boston Business Journal notes that both General Catalyst and Highland Partners are based in Massachusetts, though, so, given Going.com’s presence in Boston, it’s not likely that the site will worry about moving closer to them.

Going.com won’t head to one of Florida’s retirement communities, either.  “We think providing a hyper local community connecting 20-somethings with similar passionate interests in their urban city is just the beginning of a local media revolution,” said Evan Schumacher, Going.com’s CEO, in a statement recorded by the Journal.

$5 million will rent a lot of U-Hauls, or, well, whatever Going.com will use to redistribute its social site (and its “revolution”).  I’m sure Schumacher can figure something out.

That’s the way Tudou phrases it in an official press release.  The release goes on to describe the company as “China’s largest Internet Video Web site,” and states, “According to AC Nielsen, 40 million Chinese Internet users are currently watching more than 1.2 billion videos each month off of the Tudou platform and according to iResearch, Tudou now accounts for over half of all valid visiting of online video sharing in China. Tudou’s users also spend the most time per visit of any major video site at approximately 40 minutes per session.”

Those are very good numbers, and are only likely to rise; this display of dominance prompts Search Engine Watch’s Frank Watson to call Tudou “the Chinese equivalent to YouTube.”  Unfortunately, when trying to visit Tudou, I got a “problem loading page” message – perhaps that $19 million can iron out some technical issues.

In any event, “Tudou has continually made the right decisions to maintain its leadership position in China’s online video market and dictate the actions of its competition,” says David Orfao of General Catalyst Partners.  That competition includes the giant Sina, and Danwei’s Jeremy Goldkorn lists a number of other businesses, as well.