tudou.com
Tudou.com is still an active Chinese video website, but today it works more like a legacy Alibaba–Youku video brand than the independent Tudou service that became famous in the 2000s.
What can you find on Tudou.com today?
The current Tudou.com homepage is a Chinese-language video portal with news clips, sports videos, entertainment programs, short videos, and links for watching on mobile devices.
The site is live and serves real pages rather than showing a parked domain or a simple redirect.
Its homepage uses the Chinese slogan “召唤全球优秀短视频,” which presents Tudou as a place for quality short-form video.
Visitors can browse sections for selected news, sports updates, programs, and short clips without first understanding the long history of the brand.
The content mix is unusual because some items are fairly recent while many visible programs and sports clips date from 2022 or 2023.
This gives Tudou.com the feel of an active legacy portal rather than a fast-moving rival to today's biggest short-video apps.
The site also uses media files and services connected with Youku and Alibaba infrastructure, which shows how closely Tudou now sits inside a much larger media system.
Why was Tudou.com important in the first place?
Tudou was one of the earliest major online video services in China and helped shape the country's user-generated video market before mobile short video became normal.
According to Tudou's SEC filings, the company launched its online video site in April 2005.
The service let people upload, watch, share, rate, and comment on videos at a time when online video was still a new idea for many Chinese internet users.
By September 2010, Tudou reported more than 36 million video clips on its platform.
That early scale made the Tudou name much more important than its current homepage alone might suggest.
The company also competed directly with Youku, another large Chinese online video service.
What happened when Tudou joined Youku?
The biggest change came in 2012 when Tudou and Youku agreed to combine their businesses.
The merger was completed on August 23, 2012, making Tudou a wholly owned subsidiary of Youku.
The combined public company changed its name from Youku Inc. to Youku Tudou Inc.
This deal ended Tudou's life as a fully independent competitor and tied its future to Youku's larger video platform.
The two brands continued to exist, but Youku gradually became the more visible name for long-form online entertainment.
That history explains why a visitor to Tudou.com today will notice so many technical and content connections with Youku.
How did Alibaba become part of the Tudou story?
Alibaba first invested in Youku Tudou and later decided to take full control of the video company.
In November 2015, Alibaba announced a definitive agreement to acquire the shares of Youku Tudou that it did not already own.
Alibaba described online video as an important part of its wider digital entertainment strategy.
The deal placed the Tudou brand inside an ecosystem that also included Alibaba's commerce, advertising, data, and entertainment businesses.
This ownership is important because Tudou.com should no longer be viewed as a small independent video company competing on its own.
Did Tudou ever try to become a major short-video platform again?
Yes, Tudou was repositioned around short video several years after its merger with Youku.
In 2017, reports described plans to rebuild Tudou around mobile short clips, original creators, and links between entertainment and online shopping.
That strategy arrived while China's mobile video market was changing very quickly.
Platforms built around endless feeds, creators, recommendation systems, and very short clips soon became much stronger parts of daily mobile use.
Tudou kept its recognizable name, but it did not regain the independent market position it enjoyed during the early online-video era.
Is Tudou.com still worth visiting?
Tudou.com is worth visiting if you want to explore a surviving part of China's early video-web history or browse the Chinese clips that remain available there.
It is less useful if you expect a modern global service with a large English interface, a fresh creator community, or the experience offered by today's leading short-video apps.
The most interesting thing about Tudou.com is therefore not just what appears on the homepage today.
Its real value is that the domain connects three generations of Chinese internet video: early user uploads, the Youku merger era, and Alibaba's wider digital entertainment network.
For people researching Chinese internet history, Tudou.com is a rare example of a once-dominant web brand that still remains online after its original company and competitive role changed completely.