BEIJING, May 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- After almost a
year of development and beta testing, Youku.com, Inc. (NYSE: YOKU),
China's leading Internet
television company ("Youku"), recently officially unveiled Soku
(http://soku.youku.com ), a search tool designed to take into
account Chinese online video viewers' real needs. The new Soku will
allow viewers to more quickly and easily find engaging video
content as part of Youku's "everything about video" strategy.
Under this strategy, Youku focuses on all aspects of viewers'
video viewing experience, from producing and aggregating quality
content to helping users find and watch the content that they find
interesting. Youku describes the cornerstones of its service as
"Watch, Search, Play, Share and Create." By bringing search as a
full-featured product with the official launching of Soku, Youku
hopes to bring these five categories of user behavior closer
together.
The Soku homepage sports a clean redesign, featuring a search
box and links to regularly updated rankings of top films,
television series, and searches organized by category. New features
like the Ku Box -- a smart search field that presents results and
related suggestions in real time -- cut down the time users spend
searching for content, and a new recommendation engine will suggest
related content that users might not otherwise have discovered. A
search for the name of a director, for instance, will return a list
of his or her films in the Ku Box.
Soku's redesign also extended behind the user interface, with
many of the changes to the search engine not immediately apparent
to users. Soku now indexes content from top Chinese video sites,
making it one of the first video search engines in China to do so. Rather than simply generating
recommendations based on keywords or tags, Soku uses a number of
factors, including past user behavior and users' network speed.
Leveraging on Youku's wealth of content, it presents viewers with
videos that they will want to see. By monitoring network speeds in
different regions and at different times of the day, Soku can
recommend fast-loading, smooth-playing videos to users in different
network environments.
"With Soku, we're capitalizing our knowledge about user behavior
and applying them to the question of how we can shorten the
distance between people and the content they want to watch," said
Youku's Chief Technology Officer Jian
Yao. "We want our users to be engaged -- whether they're
content creators or content consumers -- and the personalization
that Soku now allows showcases our ability to help further improve
users' sense of engagement and participation on Youku. We believe
Soku is faster and more comprehensive than any other Chinese video
search engine."
Youku received a license for Internet video search from the
State Administration of Radio, Film and Television this spring.
Over the past several years, Chinese internet users' video viewing
habits have become increasingly search-centric. According to
figures from Chinese Internet Network Information Center, 43.8% of
online video viewers searched for video content online in 2009; in
2010, the same figure grew to 73.6%.
According to iResearch, Youku had approximately 231 million
monthly unique visitors from homes and offices in March 2011 and approximately 52 million
monthly unique visitors from Internet cafes in February 2011. Youku had a 37% market share in
terms of total user time spent viewing online videos in
China in 2010, according to
iResearch.
About Youku:
Youku.com Inc. is China's
leading Internet television company. Our Internet television
platform enables users to search, view and share high-quality video
content quickly and easily across multiple devices. Youku, which
stands for "what's best and what's cool" in Chinese, is the most
recognized online video brand in China. Youku's American depositary shares,
each representing 18 of our Class A ordinary shares, are traded on
NYSE under the symbol "YOKU."
For more information, please
contact:
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Media Relations:
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Jean Shao
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Director, International Public
Relations
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Youku.com Inc.
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Tel: +86-10-5885-1881 x7128
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Email: shaodan@youku.com
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Investor
Relations:
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Ryan Cheung
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Corporate Finance
Director
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Youku.com Inc.
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Tel: +86-10-5885-1881 x6090
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Email: ryan.cheung@youku.com
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SOURCE Youku.com Inc.