Today Tudou announced the closing of a new round of funding, an investment of USD 57 million. As far as we know, this the largest round of funding ever for a Chinese internet company. In total Tudou has raised USD 85 million over the past 3 years.

Below the English version of the press release that was sent out to the media today:

Recently there have been lots of rumors in the media about our funding. Originally we didn’t plan on making a big announcement, but it seems our silence only generated more questions and speculation, so we thought it best to issue an official statement confirming that we have closed our fourth round of funding. Our “Series D” (as they call it) was for an additional $57 million USD, which we see as sufficient to support our expansion plans for a significant time going forward. We were very happy that our existing investors decided to double-down on us by re-investing in this round, and we were also very happy to welcome a couple of new investors, family and venture funds from Singapore and the US who prefer to remain unnamed for now. In addition to our earlier funding rounds (500k, 8.5M, and 19M), we’ve now raised a total of $85 million.

Everybody knows that video sharing websites require a huge amount of bandwidth and servers to maintain a good service level to users; and as the #1 video sharing website in China, Tudou needs the most bandwidth and servers of all. Users constantly want faster delivery and higher resolution videos, which although expensive we are happily doing by rolling out H.264 high definition videos across the entire site. With over 100 million clip views & page views to over 10 million unique users every day & over 60 million unique users every month, we support a huge amount of high definition videos streaming out to about a third of China’s 175 million broadband internet users.

We know $57 million sounds like a lot – and is probably the largest amount ever raised for a pure-play Chinese Internet company in one round – but actually we turned down offers of even higher funding, because this industry is not about raising more money. We believe that the healthy development of China’s video sharing industry is about providing better services to users, advertisers, and content creators. This round of funding will allow Tudou to create a business model that lets media-hungry consumers demand their entertainment anytime and anywhere, allows advertisers to target demographics precisely and accurately, and fosters innovative content creators to receive just compensation.

Video sharing has come to a critical junction in its development as an industry. With this new round of funding, we now have the resources to patiently build up a solid business model and a healthy, viable ecosystem for all of our partners.

Happy 3rd Birthday Tudou, and check out our nominees of our first Tudou Film Festival online, as well as videos of the April 26th party at Moganshan.

This weekend the 1st Tudou Film Festival was held on the Moganshan in Zheijiang province, a 3-hour drive from downtown Shanghai. Moganshan is the total opposite of Shanghai: a quiet mountain resort surrounded by bamboo forests. Clean air, no traffic jams, and a very peaceful atmosphere. Well, normally at least, because last night I think we kept the whole mountain awake with our celebrations!

Already during the first year of Tudou we had the idea to organize a film festival. Originally we planned to do a kind of Woodstock or Burning Man kind of event somewhere around Yangshuo, but because we were still a tiny start-up at that time we did not have the resources to pull it off. But now Tudou has grown a bit bigger (over 150 employees in 5 offices all over China) and we felt that it was time to dust off our original plans. The format that was chosen was a bit different from the original idea, more like a ‘real’ film festival. People could vote for their favorite video’s on the site in several categories (a.o. best actor/actress, best script, best documentary and best animation) and the awards were given based on the users votes and the votes of a professional jury.

The festival itself was held in the old church on the top of Moganshan. I don’t think the church has been used since the heydays of Moganshan in the 1920s and 1930s, but the Tudou team (with help of the company that also does the MTV Awards) managed to turn it into a professional TV studio within a few days. A stage, a huge screen plus additional flat screens all over the church, professional lights and smoke machines, and of course a mega sound installation – and that all inside an old church.

The awards ceremony started around 6:30 PM and lasted until about 10 PM. All the top films were shown and then the jury announced the winners. All film makers/directors/podcasters were flown in, so the winners really got their Tudou award in person. Between the awards for each category there were performances, mainly by Tudou netstars. I was amazed by the talent of some of the performers.

A young boy really stole the show, he had a great performance on stage and the voice of an angel (his Tudou homepage). A Sony BMG representative who was on the jury mentioned he would consider to sign him up. Also two human beatboxer’s gave a live performance. Incredible what they can do with their voices (see this short Tudou documentary about them with English subtitles, and the Tudou homepage of one of them). The most moving performance was by a poor handicapped man in a wheel chair who earns his money by singing in the subway with his female companion. Someone filmed him (see this Tudou video) and overnight he became a star on Tudou, and now he even won one of the Tudou awards. Quite a contrast to some of the other star performances, and for me it was one of the highlights of the night.

The final part of the ceremony were the “Best of Tudou Awards”. These were given to among others the oldest podcaster (over 90 years old, he could not come to Moganshan), the one who posted the most video’s (over 2000 video’s, meaning at least 2 films per day every day for the past 3 years), and for the one with the most friends. What many people don’t know is that Tudou is actually also a sort of social network, where you can connect with friends. The number one in terms of friends is Celia, who has an amazing 20 million friends on Tudou. 20 million? Yes, even I was surprised by that figure. Celia is working at Tudou’s customer support (she was actually one of the first employees of Tudou), so she is constantly on QQ and the phone with Tudou users with questions.

The night ended with a disco party in the church, but because of the nice weather most people drank their whiskey, wine and beers on the steps leading up to the church. A night to remember for everybody!

I put a set with all pictures I took during the film festival on Flickr.com, you can see the pictures here.

On Saturday morning Gary and I decided to go for a hike, as a training for our Kilimanjaro trip in late May. We started off with a full English breakfast at Mark Kitto’s The Lodge (coffee, OJ, toast, bacon, eggs, mushrooms, tomato – all served on their terrace overlooking the valley) so we would have enough energy. They also gave us a basic map with a 3 hour hike that we decided to do. That the map was really basic we found out quickly: after 30 minutes we figured that we had missed a path, because we were at the wrong location. Probably because we were too busy discussing the future of the internet or some other related topic. Never mind, we would find our own way through the woods, it could not be too difficult we assumed.

The hike was nice, although there was hardly a flat part in it. But that’s what we wanted, because also on Kilimanjaro we do not expect too many easy tracks. We walked through tea plantations and bamboo forests, and except for a few local farmers we did not meet a soul during the hike. Even at the temple that we passed along a stream in the valley we did not see anybody. Most of the tracks were quite steep, and we walked down for more than an hour. Eventually around 1 PM we came to a small village where we asked for directions. They told us there was a small path from the village up to the village on top of Moganshan. We took the path and soon the track became very steep. Also the track split, the left part went deeper into the forest, the right one followed a small stream. Of course no sign telling us which direction we had to go. Because our path would pass by a reservoir we decided to follow the stream. After about 15 minutes the track had completely vanished and we were struggling to climb up the hill. The mountain was probably about 45% steep at this point and we literally had to climb from bamboo tree to bamboo tree. Quite fun, but the only problem was that there was a press conference planned at 3 PM, and it was 1:45 PM. According to our altitude meter we were over 550 meters already, and the village was at about 650 meters, so we should be almost at the top. A while later we were at 680 meters, however, and there was still no sign of the top of the mountain nor of a village. Even worse, thick vegetation blocked our way completely and we could not continue.

Right at that moment my wife called to check where we were and to remind us of the press conference. I had to admit that I had no idea anymore where we were – something that does not happen often to me. Because of the time we decided to hike back to the village and I asked my wife to arrange a driver to pick us up there. Going down was a lot easier, but also more dangerous. We jumped from bamboo tree to bamboo tree, and were down in about 25 minutes. There a car was waiting for us and at 10 minutes to 3 we were back on the mountain. It turned out that we had indeed taken the wrong turn, we should not have followed the stream. Because of that we literally ended up on the wrong mountain, so even if we had made it to the top we still had to go down into another valley before we could hike up Moganshan. We had made the right decision to go back, and all in all it was a great experience. But next time we’ll bring a better map and a GPS!

This week one year ago we arrived in Lhasa for our mountain bike ride through the Himalaya. For that occasion I uploaded a short English-language version of the documentary that was made during our trip on YouTube. In total there are 12 episodes, each between 4 to 8 minutes. I also made a playlist of the episodes, so you can watch them all at once. The episodes cover the whole trip, from the preparations in Shanghai, the arrival in Lhasa, the beautiful nature in Tibet, Mount Everest Base Camp to the arrival in Nepal. The embedded player below plays all the episodes.

In just over one month, Gary Wang, my dad and I will arrive in Tanzania. Not for a safari like most tourists, but to climb Africa’s highest mountain, the Kilimanjaro. Today I faxed all documents to the organizer and now there is no way back anymore. That feels pretty good actually, until now we were not completely sure if we would be able to get all documents together on time and whether it would work with flights and work arrangements. But suddenly everything started to fall into place and we now know that we’ll be on a plane to Africa in a few weeks time.

The plan is to reach the 5895-meter summit of Kilimanjaro on June 3, at about 6 AM. Most people climb the last and most difficult part during the night, because then the snow is frozen and it’s easier to move forward. We will arrive in Tanzania only 6 days before that, so we won’t have much time to acclimatize. From what I understand there are two main problems. First the temperature difference, because you start off on the equator in the middle of the tropics at temperatures far above 30 degrees Celcius and at the top you can encounter temperatures of -25 degrees Celcius.

A much more dangerous problem is the high altitude. From last year’s trip in Tibet we know that above 4500 meters it gets very very difficult to move forward and your brain starts to function more slowly, especially if you did not spend enough time to get your body used to less oxygen. Because we do not have much time to acclimatize, the high altitude will likely be our biggest enemy. We’ll see, last year we made it on our mountain bikes to Mount Everest base camp (at 5200 meters), so we should have the will power to climb to the top of this mountain as well. But I also know that if mountain sickness hits, I will not be foolish enough to risk my life and I will go down immediately.

A lesser problem is to get in shape on time. None of us really trained much so far specifically for this, but we are probably all in a decent shape. On Sunday I ran a relaxed 10.7 kilometers on the treadmill in one hour without feeling tired, Tuesday I jogged 30 minutes at an incline of 8.5 – 10%, followed by a slower walk at an incline of 15%. That also went quite well, although I felt my muscles. And just now I decided to walk up to my apartment, which is located on the 37th floor. That also went quite good actually. The next weeks I will mainly do long slow runs in the gym, and I plan to do a lot of stair climbing. This weekend we will be in Moganshan, where I will have the opportunity to test my new hiking boots for the first time. That will likely be the only time that I can train on a real mountain as well.

Another part of the preparation is that I will cut back as much as possible on my alcohol intake. Not a big deal, because I normally don’t drink much during the week anyway. But the problem is that I do have a couple of good parties ahead of me: among others this weekend the Tudou Film Festival at Moganshan, and (even more worrying) the weekend before going to Tanzania the INSEAD ball at the Chateau de Fontainebleau in France…

I look very much forward to this exciting new challenge, very different from last year’s bike ride but also with a lot of similarities. It’s great to combine hard work with even harder physical challenges. It gives me a kick to to see if I can physically and mentally reach the goals I set for myself. And it certainly fits one of my life’s motto’s: Always try to live your life to the fullest!

Picture (creative commons): Rob Parkin

UPDATE: On May 24 Shanghaiist corrected its earlier story. Things were not as bad as described in the original email that they received. Although one person unsuccessfully tried to attack the volunteer and the crowd indeed surrounded his taxi (quite scary experience, I think), he was not physically harmed in the incident. I sincerely hope that this was an isolated incident and that things will calm down soon in China.

In order to avoid other media from using this story I have decided to delete the original blog post. You can still read the original article on Shanghaiist here.

In case you follow me on Twitter you know I have been posting there more and more over the past months. It’s a great tool to always keep in touch with real-life friends, people with similar interests and fellow entrepreneurs. I shared most of my life on Twitter, and got a lot back as a result as well. Try it for yourself, hard to explain in a blog post – but the social Internet basically works because the more you give the more you get. The same as with traffic on your site: the more you send people away the more they will come back. But I digress.

But I have always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Twitter because of its frequent outages. There were times when the service was more often not working than that it was up. But it seems people like the service so much that they take that for granted. The problem is that there is simply no alternative, because the whole audience is on Twitter and you cannot just transfer that to Pownce or Jaiku. But honestly, I am a bit fed up with it now.

Early on Saturday morning (China time) I realized that I was not getting updates from people that I was following. I un-followed and re-followed them, and that did the trick – but only for about 1 hour. Then they were gone again. And the thing is that they also could not see my updates. Right now I have over 370 followers on Twitter, but I have no clue who I will reach with my messages and who I will not reach. A bit like sending a mass email, but not knowing who is able to receive it. And the other way around: others are broadcasting messages that might be interesting for me to see, but they don’t show up in my time line.

It’s now Monday night and the folks at Twitter still did not manage to solve the problem. Therefore I have decided to stop posting on Twitter until this issue is solved. It’s also a good way to test whether I am addicted to Twitter or not (I don’t think so, it’s just fun to get instant feedback on things you are doing). In the meantime I might post some messages on my Pownce account or on Facebook instead. Or I might just go back to the good old days before micro blogging, when I just had this weblog.

Last Friday Tudou celebrated its 3rd anniversary party in the Tudou Warehouse in Shanghai. About 200-300 people attended the party, that already started at 8 PM (parties in China always start a lot earlier than in Europe). The entrance lane to the Warehouse was decorated with lights, and the new Tudou logo was projected in several colors on the outside walls. Inside, part of the first floor was redecorated as a club with a small stage and professional DJ’s. As usual during our parties there was an open bar, with among others Absolut vodka mixes (Absolut sponsored some of the drinks) and all kinds of beers (several US microbrews and of course Tsingtao). After a not-so-good experience with Absolut during an earlier Tudou party (where I cannot even remember how I got home), I mainly drank the microbrews, and they were excellent.

Around 9 pm a video of the past 3 years was shown (I missed it, because I was trying to direct guests to the Warehouse – it’s not easy to find), and then Gary gave a short speech. Then the evening really started with professional dancers doing a show. Later in the evening Gary and I cut the 3-year anniversary cake (that was made by Yang Lei, good job!), and I was glad that this time people ate it instead of throwing it all around like during our 2nd anniversary. The first floor hallway walls were still virgin white, and soon the party goers were putting graffiti all over it. Now those walls look as cool as the second floor, that was covered in user-generated content two years ago already.

On the middle rooftop we had a BBQ and we played some older music (think ABBA), and it soon got pretty crowded up there. I was not sure if the roof would hold it (it luckily did) and did not want to stand in the “yang rou chuanr” smoke, so I went up to the top roof. We brought along some beers and soon a lot more people followed us up the steep steps. We had a lot of fun up there, especially when others volunteered to go down to supply us with more cold beers and even some birthday cake (thanks Koen).

It was a great evening, and we were lucky that the weather was also quite good so we could spend most of the night outside. Around 2 AM we decided to call it a night, when I realized I had not seen my wife for quite some time. It turned out she had called a meeting of some of her staff and they were just finishing up (she is very dedicated to her work!). She then went home, but Gary and I decided to continue the celebration in Lounge 18. We managed to get a table there and had a few bottles of champagne. Once again a Tudou night to remember!

I put some pictures on my Flickr account, but doing a search Flickr on the words Tudou party should give some more results. Also on Facebook I already found some pictures, for example this set by George Godula.