Despite intense competition in the video-sharing portal scene, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen (陳士駿) yesterday said his site will not be toppled from its perch.
"We are 100 percent focused on creating the best platform that is the easiest to use. You will see our continued success," Chen told a Taipei press conference yesterday.
YouTube has enjoyed a steady stream of visitors, who all have a say on what content is uploaded and which clips become favorites, he said.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
YouTube will continue to empower its users with better tools, Chen said, especially after integrating resources and expertise from Internet titan Google Inc, which acquired YouTube last October for US$1.65 billion.
He also said that his early experience with PayPal -- eBay Inc's electronic-payment unit -- enabled him to beef up end-to-end solutions that won over users' hearts whilst he has been running YouTube.
A number of Web sites, including Yahoo-Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩), are looking to benefit from the popularity of video-sharing portals.
Yahoo-Kimo launched a localized video-sharing service last October, which is said to be the first Chinese-language global video-sharing platform linking local and overseas content.
YouTube is set to follow in its footsteps by offering localized versions in Asia, including Taiwan in the near term.
"We want YouTube to look like a local site to promote the local community, and not look like a US site to international users," Chen said.
The contents should be culturally relevant to domestic surfers, and will adhere to local customs and laws to ensure the site is the best it can be for users and advertisers, he said.
Born in Taiwan, Chen, 29, moved to the US with his parents when he was eight years old.
His visit to Taiwan to study market conditions and meet fans and business partners has attracted huge media coverage in the past few days.
Chen created YouTube with his friends Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim to share video clips that they had made during a get-together. YouTube quickly became one of the world's most visited sites.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by