I honestly don’t know. It’s been a week now and 56.com, which along with Youku.com and Tudou.com is one of the leading video sharing sites in China, is still down. Last week I put in some calls to Jay Chang, the CFO and president, but he hasn’t returned.  Unfortunately since Friday I’ve been out of the country, traveling in Northern California on business, so I haven’t had a chance to talk to people on the ground and learn anything more about what’s happening with the site.

If you have any solid information regarding the state of things — especially if you’re an advertiser or an are with a media buyer and have been in touch with the 56.com sales folks — please let me know what’s happening.

Currently, visitors to the site are greeted with a message announcing large-scale video data maintenance, which you can read about over on Tangos Chan’s site.

This looks to be fairly grim, and Tudou’s episode now looks like a very minor slap on the wrist compared to this. SARFT has already begun issuing video licenses, but conspicuously absent in the first batch are the leading sites; 6rooms and user-generated ad driven vid site Ku6, along with Sequoia-backed P2P site UUSee.com, are among the first recipients.

Meanwhile, I’ll try and find some time to post a piece I’ve been working on for a while. Sorry for the hiatus! - Kaiser