Five Months After Its Debut, YouTube Is a Star

Terry Turner of Arlington hopes his video commentary posted on YouTube makes him as popular as blogger Wonkette. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

Executives from MTVU, the network's cable channel and Web site aimed at college students, said they are investing heavily in tapping online video, music and gaming to interact with America's youth. Lehre said an earlier deal with MTVU fell through, though the network says the two are still in talks.

"We believe David is a really talented college student," said MTVU spokesman Jason Rzepka. "His work would be right at home on MTVU."

YouTube first grabbed public attention in January, when a user posted a clip from NBC's "Saturday Night Live" in which two actors rap about "The Chronicles of Narnia" and cupcakes. It quickly became one of the most viewed clips on the Web site, as thousands of people shared it, most commonly by e-mail or on blogs. NBC claimed YouTube had violated copyright laws and demanded it remove the clip, and YouTube complied. But seeing its popularity, NBC quickly posted the same clip of "Lazy Sunday" on its own Web site.

YouTube said that it does not prescreen the content its members upload but that it complies with copyright laws. If a company complains that some content is copyrighted and asks for it to be removed, YouTube executives say, they investigate it and will remove it. Similarly, the company said it relies on alerts from its users to self-police content. The company said objectionable material such as pornography gets removed quickly.

But these days, YouTube executives said they receive far more calls from TV networks, movie studios and record labels looking to partner with them than to complain about copyright infringement. The 25-employee firm founded by early employees of PayPal Inc., a company that runs an online payment service, survives mostly on $11.5 million in venture capital funding and revenue from text and banner ads.

"We're really focused on democratizing the entertainment experience, so whether it's a user-generated content from aspiring filmmakers or from one of the networks, the reality is it's users who are in control," marketing director Julie Supan said. "Our users decide what rises up."

Commercially made videos are becoming more prominent. Last month, visitors to YouTube were greeted with a music video for the 1970s band Queen (of "We Will Rock You" fame) performing "Bohemian Rhapsody" and a behind-the-scenes movie on a music video for alternative rock band Flaming Lips. The site also recently featured a trailer for the new movie "Clerks II," a sequel to the cult classic of the same name. In days, the "Clerks II" trailer had been viewed 223,000 times by YouTube's members and 330 had posted comments, providing instant feedback to the Weinstein Co., which produced the film.

Supan said last month that viewers are about to see a lot more promotional material on YouTube.

But users said they are wary of being courted too aggressively. "If I want to watch commercials, I can watch TV," said James Sullivan, a YouTube user in Springfield. He recently heard about the "Clerks II" clip on YouTube because he saw director Kevin Smith promoting it on his MySpace.com page. That kind of promotion is okay, Sullivan said, but he does not want to see, for example, a McDonald's ad. "I would hope they are keeping to entertainment. People would be more put off by seeing a commercial," he said.

Turner, the Arlington resident with the "Watching Washington" video, said it is tough enough to be heard on the Internet with so many sites competing for attention. He hopes his short commentary will eventually become as popular as the blog Wonkette.com, except in an online video format.

So far, he estimates his audience on any given week is 35 to 120 people. Success, he said, will be reaching 10,000 to 20,000 viewers. If blogging has taught him anything, it is that early starters had a huge advantage in attracting an audience.

"This gives me a creative outlet. There is the possibility it will be economically viable someday, but I try not to focus on that too much," Turner said. For now, it doesn't seem to matter to him that not many are watching the video that takes him five hours a week to produce. "I don't really have a life."

Read a transcript of Sara Kehaulani Goo's interview with David Lehre. Go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/.