'The interest is really a turning point this year'
Chrystia Freeland | Sunday, 1 June 2008
CHAD Hurley, a 31-year-old user interface expert, and a couple of friends stumbled on the idea for YouTube just over three years ago when they wanted to share some videos and found existing services too clunky. By October 16 2006, YouTube had become such a cultural phenomenon that Google paid $1.65bn to acquire it.
Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive, believes the growth of online video is the most important internet development of the past year: according to Nielsen NetRatings, YouTube now delivers nearly half of all the video streams watched in the US and more than twice as many as its next ten biggest competitors combined.
That is making YouTube a force in politics as well as popular culture. But the site faces challenges from traditional media companies, which accuse it of copyright violation. And it has yet to monetise its audience effectively.
Edited highlights from a FT video interview with Mr Hurley appear below.
Do you ever long for the early days when YouTube was just you and your pals doing something fun?
It's a lot easier when it's just two of you building a product. You just think of something, build it and do it. But as the team was -- as you're dealing with a system that millions of people are relying on around the world -- it's not as easy to make quick decisions. So you miss that. We're still happy that we're able to innovate at a fairly rapid rate, but it's not like it was in the past.
Do you have any regrets about the loss of your independence following the acquisition by Google?
No. It was a hard decision, but it would have been really hard potentially for YouTube to survive and grow as it has [alone]. We were able to [address] a lot of the stresses and strains on the system where we needed more machines to accelerate the amount of video that could stream to our users and accelerate our international plans.
We're part of Google but we still do feel truly very independent. We have our own office. Eric and Larry and Sergey [Google's chief executive and co-founders] continue to push us to make decisions pretty independently as a team. From time to time they might give us a suggestion, but in terms of culture, [YouTube] really fits with what Google is trying to accomplish.
How do you expect to make money?
A combination of things. Right now we have in-video ads, which allow people to participate by clicking on an ad or play a video within the video they're currently watching. We've seen a great response to that, better than traditional display advertising, banners and either images or text ads.
We just completed the acquisition of DoubleClick [an online ad-serving company] and a lot of that technology is going to help us.
You weren't tempted by pre-roll [in which viewers must watch a short ad before their chosen video]?
Pre-rolls would have been a great solution to making a lot of money very quickly but potentially hurt the community that you build. The motivation behind becoming part of Google was to leverage the way people are able to promote videos, just as they would a website. People can pay to have the visibility of their website elevated through a link, through paid search, through an auction-based system.
Some governments may feel content should be filtered or censored for political reasons. What will be your response to that?
We're always working with local governments and respect their laws and local culture. Again, our tools provide the flexibility for us to work with them to remove material that shouldn't be on the site.
Is there not a freedom of speech issue there?
To the extent that we're against censorship but we're respecting local laws. We don't want to put our opinion or view based on our perspective on another government. The majority of' the videos in our system are people just communicating their own thoughts and ideas are good for everyone around the world.
Repressive governments might disagree.
I guess we'll visit that when we cross that bridge, but right now we've been happy with the response.
Traditional creators of content are now creating their own sites, such as Hulu. Might they become competitors?
They're more competitive with traditional TV outlets or other video-on-demand services. We're actually working with Hulu: they have a channel [on YouTube] where they're putting up promotional clips to drive traffic to their site.
There's going to be many video services to come - we hope YouTube is going to be able to provide the best service for them. We're also opening up our API (application programming interface) so people can build video applications based on what we've been able to develop.
Will we see longer-format videos on YouTube?
The short format is always going to be more popular. People are visiting a series of different websites, you're instant-messaging, you're checking your e-mail, and you may have a chance to watch a few clips. As we build bridges and connections to other devices beyond cell phones - connections to the TV - that is where it'll become more of an opportunity for us [to] host and really push longer-form content.
Some important moments in the US election campaign, from Reverend Jeremiah Wright to Snipergate, have been YouTube phenomena. Has that surprised you?
[It] has been quite interesting to see the candidates talking directly to the voters and the voters voicing their opinions on certain issues on our site. Hopefully we have played some role in ... helping more people turn out ... The internet is really at a turning-point this year in terms of the influence it's going to have on the elections.
................................
Under syndication arrangement with FE
Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive, believes the growth of online video is the most important internet development of the past year: according to Nielsen NetRatings, YouTube now delivers nearly half of all the video streams watched in the US and more than twice as many as its next ten biggest competitors combined.
That is making YouTube a force in politics as well as popular culture. But the site faces challenges from traditional media companies, which accuse it of copyright violation. And it has yet to monetise its audience effectively.
Edited highlights from a FT video interview with Mr Hurley appear below.
Do you ever long for the early days when YouTube was just you and your pals doing something fun?
It's a lot easier when it's just two of you building a product. You just think of something, build it and do it. But as the team was -- as you're dealing with a system that millions of people are relying on around the world -- it's not as easy to make quick decisions. So you miss that. We're still happy that we're able to innovate at a fairly rapid rate, but it's not like it was in the past.
Do you have any regrets about the loss of your independence following the acquisition by Google?
No. It was a hard decision, but it would have been really hard potentially for YouTube to survive and grow as it has [alone]. We were able to [address] a lot of the stresses and strains on the system where we needed more machines to accelerate the amount of video that could stream to our users and accelerate our international plans.
We're part of Google but we still do feel truly very independent. We have our own office. Eric and Larry and Sergey [Google's chief executive and co-founders] continue to push us to make decisions pretty independently as a team. From time to time they might give us a suggestion, but in terms of culture, [YouTube] really fits with what Google is trying to accomplish.
How do you expect to make money?
A combination of things. Right now we have in-video ads, which allow people to participate by clicking on an ad or play a video within the video they're currently watching. We've seen a great response to that, better than traditional display advertising, banners and either images or text ads.
We just completed the acquisition of DoubleClick [an online ad-serving company] and a lot of that technology is going to help us.
You weren't tempted by pre-roll [in which viewers must watch a short ad before their chosen video]?
Pre-rolls would have been a great solution to making a lot of money very quickly but potentially hurt the community that you build. The motivation behind becoming part of Google was to leverage the way people are able to promote videos, just as they would a website. People can pay to have the visibility of their website elevated through a link, through paid search, through an auction-based system.
Some governments may feel content should be filtered or censored for political reasons. What will be your response to that?
We're always working with local governments and respect their laws and local culture. Again, our tools provide the flexibility for us to work with them to remove material that shouldn't be on the site.
Is there not a freedom of speech issue there?
To the extent that we're against censorship but we're respecting local laws. We don't want to put our opinion or view based on our perspective on another government. The majority of' the videos in our system are people just communicating their own thoughts and ideas are good for everyone around the world.
Repressive governments might disagree.
I guess we'll visit that when we cross that bridge, but right now we've been happy with the response.
Traditional creators of content are now creating their own sites, such as Hulu. Might they become competitors?
They're more competitive with traditional TV outlets or other video-on-demand services. We're actually working with Hulu: they have a channel [on YouTube] where they're putting up promotional clips to drive traffic to their site.
There's going to be many video services to come - we hope YouTube is going to be able to provide the best service for them. We're also opening up our API (application programming interface) so people can build video applications based on what we've been able to develop.
Will we see longer-format videos on YouTube?
The short format is always going to be more popular. People are visiting a series of different websites, you're instant-messaging, you're checking your e-mail, and you may have a chance to watch a few clips. As we build bridges and connections to other devices beyond cell phones - connections to the TV - that is where it'll become more of an opportunity for us [to] host and really push longer-form content.
Some important moments in the US election campaign, from Reverend Jeremiah Wright to Snipergate, have been YouTube phenomena. Has that surprised you?
[It] has been quite interesting to see the candidates talking directly to the voters and the voters voicing their opinions on certain issues on our site. Hopefully we have played some role in ... helping more people turn out ... The internet is really at a turning-point this year in terms of the influence it's going to have on the elections.
................................
Under syndication arrangement with FE