Toodou.com: Will the revolution will be vidblogged?

Shanghaiist just read a recent newspaper article about China's premiere and largest pod/videocasting website , Toodou.com. Our interest piqued, we went over to the site to see what we could find -- and find stuff we did! First off, here's the CNN special on bloggers and podcasters where they interview the founder of Toodou, the US educated Gary Wang. Wang and his Dutch co-founder started the site "out of boredom," which is what cool internet startup business types nonchalantly call what is in fact their shrewed intuition of what's going to become the next big thing. Or they were really bored.

And we're bored too, but not bored enough actually entertain ourselves with videos of Taiwanese TV commercials or terriers that "sing" to the tune of mobile phone rings. Without spending too much of our precious time (founder Wang says that "killing time" is what Toodou.com is for), we did find some cool stuff, like this video of gangs of people with sticks fighting each other. The soundtrack to this surreptitiously filmed incident starts off with a suspenseful horror movie theme, then moves to Zorro theme, and then ends with a rousing chorus of Bon Jovi.

Yet there is more afoot here than the traditional Chinese reverence for Italians from New Jersey -- a Dutch filmmaker, David Verbeek, is using this site to make a casting call for a film titled Shanghai 20. This film is about three sets of lovers living in modern Shanghai, and they're looking for actors, all twentysomethings.

One of the male leads is named Jochum, a German aged 20-30. Although you're supposed to apply through the website by uploading pictures and videos of yourself masturbating showing off your talent or skills in something, we're going to put this information here on Shanghaiist for those German men (or those who can pass for German) who might be interested in auditioning for the role of a "shy, slow, and neurotic" man in a relationship with a Chinese woman named Yvonne.

Now Toodou.com's got an ad system in place. They append commercials that last about five seconds to certain video posts, and if someone clicks on the link in the video, the uploader gets paid one fen (.01 yuan).
Like GoogleAds, once you get 100 yuan you can ask them to send you payment. That might not sound too enticing, but if you've got a singing terrier, why not ask them to earn their keep?

Photo from www.cocsc.com.