优酷创始人古永锵 优酷老总古永锵专访 详述阿里入股与美剧禁播

优酷老总古永锵专访 详述阿里入股与美剧禁播  

Chinese e-merce giant Alibaba Holding Group continued its streak of deals yesterday
paying $1.22 billion for an 18.5% stake in one of China's most popular online video sites Youku Tudou. Part Youtube
part Netflix
Youku Tudou offers an array of content from self-produced talk shows and dramas to syndicated foreign shows like The Good Wife
and user created content.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal
Youku Tudou Founder and Chief Executive Victor Koo said the pany held talks with a few panies in parallel
eventually deciding on Alibaba after a series of meetings in Shanghai
Beijing and Hong Kong in recent months. Koo spoke about how his pany will make use of the funds
the rash of recent deals in China's Inter sector
and the government's recent crackdown on four American TV shows. The following is an edited excerpt of the interview.
WSJD: What was the motivation for taking the investment from Alibaba?
《华尔街日报》：接受阿里巴巴的投资是出于什么样的动机？
Koo: When we first really considered a strategic investment
we talked to all potential partners and indicated Youku Tudou is an independently operated pany so we were looking for strategic investments to take us to the next step. The strategic investment itself will help us accelerate our progress as well as the whole development of our Inter entertainment media platform.
We've been around now for 7 or 8 years and we're looking at this as an important strategic step to progress us to the next level with financial resources
strategic use we see these opportunities happening around us
we want to leverage the market opportunity that is in front of us.
公司成立至今已有七、八年的时间，我们将引入战略投资视为通过财务资源和战略资源使公司发展到一个新水平的重要战略步骤，因为我们看到了身边的这些机会，我们希望利用摆在我们面前的市场机遇。
WSJD: What is Alibaba's motivation for making more investments into media and entertainment in China?
Koo: From their perspective
clearly the whole area of video as well as entertainment media is a growth sector as China moves to a consumer-led economy. This is an area where traditionally they have not focused
and they really felt that by investing in Youku Tudou they [can leverage that]. I think we have a lot of mon vision and mon goals in terms of what [the video and entertainment industry] can be in China.
For example
the U.S. and Europe have a very developed media entertainment business
but in Asia you look at Korea for example
it's a relatively small country but its culture and entertainment industry has widespread influence in Asia as well as the rest of the world. China has a huge population and a very sizable Inter kind of reach can create a lot of interesting opportunities. With our base
I think whether it's in terms of content and how it ties with Alibaba's businesses in terms of merce
big data
cloud as well as payment
there are a lot of interesting areas we will explore together.
WSJD: What is your view on the recent crackdown by the government on several popular U.S. television shows including 'The Good Wife
' which you feature on your site?
Koo: Besides our strength in web-based original content
syndication is also an area where we started global syndication earlier than any of our petitors and have the broadest library here. Overall
what we see is that the regulatory authorities are highly supportive of this and of course there may be isolated incidents or content [that have problems] -- that is something that as an industry we need to cooperate and work with under the overall framework here in China. And so we don't see that as a widespread phenomenon. I think it's new enough that we're also having munication [with the government].
WSJD: What ' s going on in China ' s Inter sector now with all these big deals?
Koo: I've recently talked about the 20 years of the Chinese Inter -- in my view there are a couple of inflection points in these 20 years and 2013 and 2014 is definitely one of those inflection points. I think in five to ten years when people look back [they will see] this is the beginning of the multi-screen age
and mobile Inter and smart TVs
all these things are ing together.
So you've seen an acceleration of industry growth as well as an acceleration of strategic cooperation of different forms
investments
partnerships
acquisitions
and mergers and so forth. These kinds of strategic tie-ups [happen] when you see a market opportunity and a market inflection that has encouraged the key players in the industry to be more open-minded or more proactive in terms of thinking outside the box and being more strategic.
WSJD: How will this affect Youku Tudou's cooperation with other panies?
Koo: Youku Tudou has an open cooperation strategy and that will continue to be the case
so we work with a wide variety of screen manufacturers
whether it's smart TVs or set-top boxes because we have the leading content sofare service and user base in terms of video.