PandaPassport.com – China Blog

Here is my list of top 5 Chinese youtube clones, but make sure you stay tuned till the end, because the +1 is a real gem! The neato thing about most of these sites is that they can host shared/stolen content for everyone to enjoy/report.
Note: I’m not endorsing these sites, I’m just trying to make the barrier between the eastern and western internet a little bit more transparent.

So here are the top 5, according to the gospel of panda:

5. mofile.com

A lot of web-cammery, a decent tags section, these guys break my top 5 — even though I haven’t used them too much. Looks good though, as you can see from this White Stripes Video?Seven Nation Army:

4. 6rooms.com

You can find some stuff on here, but it’s more difficult than some of the other sites. I’m usually not too impressed with them, but I am today. They earn my 4-spot, mostly because they have Spiderman 3 online! (Click here to see) Poor quality, but what do ya expect?
Note: Sony claims that they “have so far found no pirated copies of Spider-Man 3 on the Internet” (thx Imagethief), but I guess that “so far” is done with as of now.
Here’s a sample:

3. 56.com

56.com is pretty youtubie, with lots of homemade videos and people lipsyncing in front of their webcam. There are a number of movies and tv shows, as well as music and sports.
Here’s the 2007 NBA All Star Game, Part 1 and Part 2. And here’s a sample to view in the player:

2. tudou.com

Tudou is the oldest of all the Chinese video sites, starting up in 2005. Layout seems very similar to youtube, and ease of use is quite good (maybe because it’s a familiar layout?). Because tudou has been going for so long, there’s already a good base of users, and a good base of videos posted. Here’s a sample movie, Xmen 3 (indexed, and continuous play). And a sample for viewing in via the embedded player:

1. youku.com

This site’s domain used to be yuqoo.com, but I guess they decided to change it for some reason or another. I wonder why? In anycase, despite their resemblance to youtube, I’m crowning youku the king of Chinese internet video sites. It’s ease of use, and blistering speed puts youtube to shame. And it seems to be the only Chinese video site with a user base that can rival tudou. And because of that, you can find almost any media on there. Here’s Season one of Heroes (indexed) and episodes played continuously back to back. And here’s a sample of the player:

…and now time for the +1.

Not a youtube clone, but the Winner is:

Mojiti.com!

This is one of the cooler video sites to come out in a long time, period. It’s actually not a video site itself, but it allows you to bring in videos from other sites (such as youtube, youku, tudou, etc.) and annotate that video in various ways. You can add links, subtitles, pop-up video bubbles, whatever you want. Here’s a sample video, that basically shows all the stuff they got in their repetoire:

Pretty amazing, eh?

For more information on the video sites in China, be sure to check out danwei and China Web Review. Or you can check out my blog posts categorized, appropriately enough, China Stolen Media. Or just scroll to the blue box at the bottom of every post.

Also, this post is a part of Darren Rowse’s “Top 5″ writing project, so be sure to pay a visit and check out all the action on Problogger.