Jianjun's Blog

Tudou¹ to shut down rumor has been circulating on the Internet for quite a while. According to some sources, it was all started from two articles published on two Chinese portals Netease and Sohu.

It was reported that Netease removed the article soon but sohu still has it in Chinese, whose title clearly indicates the information was neither independent nor confirmed（传土豆网… Source says Tudou…）.

Later this information was translated into English and appeared on some influential blogs. China Herald said its source came from a Twitter update! Danwei.org quoted China Herald, while China Herald quoted Danwei.org.

Then the rumor was everywhere, even long after the overnight denial of the shut down from Tudou on March 7 (news report appeared on March 6). China Herald’s article was published exactly on March 7 but clearly it never followed up on that denial even with two updates!

Furthermore, it says, “Tudou.com is the world’s largest video hosting firm, claiming three times the traffic volume of number two, YouTube.”, which can not be independently verified but rather doubtful. Here are the statistics I got for Tudou and YouTube on Alexa, Compete and Quancast:

So where and how did this Tudou to Shut Down Rumor get started?

The ‘media source’ mentioned by Sohu article on March 6 was probably just the deleted Netease report. But after the March 7 report from Beijing Business Today that Tudou denied such a report, the whole thing would have died down if without the ‘help’ from some of the outdated/slanted reports from some bloggers.

And who benefits most from this rumor? Definitely Tudou. I’d never visited Tudou before the rumor appeared, but have been there a dozen times since then. That’s probably why our ancestor said: 塞翁失马，安知非福 (Misfortune might be a blessing in disguise.)

The lesson learned from Tudou to shut down rumor: NEVER trust online journalism.

¹ Tudou means potato（土豆）in colloquial Chinese.

I’ve been using a cool theme (Connections) since 2006 and never thought of changing it. I picked it then because it was artistically appealing to me and fitted well with my own header picture – an ancient Chinese work that dates back to Song Dynasty (960-1279).

However, recently when I read my own entries on those pages I felt the font size was too small and the background color didn’t give enough contrast. I guess most readers’ eyes must be strained by those two factors. I was told that most Internet readers never read online but browse through articles. Ah… I’m one of them myself!

Now I changed the theme to WordPress default. Simpleness is sometimes more beautiful.

iTranslate.cn is launched today as the new dedicated domain for Jianjun’s blog. From now on, all new blog entries will appear under the new domain with current web site as a backup. Please feel free to bookmark the new domain and subscribe to its feed. In 2008, I will try to concentrate on my blogging and bring to you articles covering translation, i18n, culture and many other subjects!

Cheers!

Jianjun