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It might have been clever the first few years, but we've now entered a stage at which everyone who calls something "the new black" deserves to have their lips paperclipped shut.  On a related note, having a site describe itself as "the new YouTube" may be less annoying, but stats are likely to show that it's no more accurate.

Matt Marshall looked specifically at a Chinese site named Youku.  There's a certain similarity in identification between it and YouTube, eh?  And to its credit, Youku was correct in stating that it had reached a certain number of views - the number of views YouTube received as it was being bought by Google.

But Marshall writes, "Youku has far fewer unique visitors than YouTube did back in 2006, according to Comscore's global data.  And while no slouch, Youku doesn't appear to be growing in the same upward right manner YouTube did, almost without exception - and continues to grow today."

There doesn't appear to be any Grand Lesson to learn here, other than the already-known one of not believing everything you read in press releases.  Still, if the American economy tanks, we might do a bit better having some knowledge of foreign companies.

Also, if anyone's keeping score, Baidu still very much qualifies as the Google of China.