Yupoo Launches New Version, Interview With CEO

Written by Luyi Chen on August 10, 2007
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YupooYesterday, Hangzhou based photo sharing service Yupoo rolled out a new version. The new update includes a couple of new features, improvements and a WAP version. To put them together, it makes the site more like Flickr.

There’re several Flickr-like services in China including Yupoo. Even clones have winner and loser. So far, Yupoo is temporally ahead of its peers in number of users, traffic and total storage. Yupoo is said to have 2M registered users and 40M photos uploaded.

We have been hearing that Yupoo received 6-figure USD fund from Blogcn, a Hangzhou-based BSP invested by IDG. But the deal has never been announced to the press.

We had a short interview with Liu Pingyang, CEO of Yupoo, as following:

1. There’re a couple of new updates in the new version. Which one is the most important, and why?

We have opened updates and closed ones. Those closed parts are the most important in my eyes. They are for preparation of our next update. The opened parts are that we should do.

2. We noticed that there’s a new feature called ‘Set’, and it’s limited for free users. But we cannot find a way to upgrade our account yet. Do you have plan to roll out paid service any time soon?

Yes. We are going to roll out several new updates from the end of this month to the middle of next one. Yupoo’s platform has become mature. And We are going to see some income.

3. Would you please say something about the size of the team and funding status. There’s no formal news about Yupoo’s fund raising, but according to the service you are providing and time of your living, it seems impossible that you don’t have outside funding.

Currently we have 15 people. This update is the first result of the cooperation of the new team. We are going to update our blog to praise our team members. As to our fund raising, we can only say that we have got investment, but we are not going to talk about that now, sorry!

4. Most of the photo sharing service like you are called Flickr-like services. Have you stepped out of the shadow of Flickr, in other words, found your own direction? Which features are the indications?

There’re lots of Flickr-like services in China and overseas. I think it’s easy to clone the product, but the internal operation cannot be cloned. Both Yupoo and other Flickr-like services will be meeting the challenge of operation. And there’re lots of traps in it.

5. Which are the most important milestones since you launched the product in 2005?

2005.10 We quite our old jobs to work on Yupoo fulltime
2006.1 We launched Yupoo version 1.0
2006.7 We decided to follow a Flickr-like strategy. The usability of the product reached a new level
2007.3 Our thoughts on operation of the whole site turned mature
2007.8 We rolled out a major update

2 Responses to “Yupoo Launches New Version, Interview With CEO”

  1. i poo on August 12th, 2007 11:38 am

    6. How did you come up with such a great name?

    Well, I was thinking about social networks while on the toilet…

  2. usome on August 12th, 2007 11:54 am

    好网站，顶一下！

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