The other shoe has dropped, or so it would appear. At midnight last night China time, Tudou.com, one of China’s three leading video sharing sites, posted an announcement saying, “To all Potatoes: In order to provide everyone with even better service, we’re relocating Tudou’s central server room. March 14 12am - midnight,  our service will pause for 24 hours. March 15 12am, the move to the new server room will be complete.” I’m late blog this because I just got off a plane from Korea.

I’ll leave everyone to draw their own conclusions about what actually happened. There’s a story on Sohu.com about this here, which makes reference to (unnamed, unsourced) reports about a document supposedly handed down from SARFT central to its Shanghai bureau, called “Shutdown Order Sanctioning Tudou’s Conduct in Violation of Regulations on Internet Audio-Video Services ” — my loose translation — which according to the Sohu story, order an indefinite shutdown pending rectification and reform for ineffective controls of pornographic content.

Speculation abounds about what’s behind all of this, and I’m not going to contribute any grist for the rumor mill. Let’s see what happens tonight at midnight — whether they’re back up and running.

Any media buyers out there want to comment on what this does to their confidence in ad buys on video sharing sites?