YouTube to Share Revenue With Site's Users
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Sunday, January 28, 2007
DAVOS, Switzerland -- Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, said Saturday that his site will start sharing revenue with its millions of users.
Hurley said one major proposed innovation is a way to let users be paid for content. About 70 million videos are viewed daily on YouTube, which was sold to Google for $1.65 billion last year.
"We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users," Hurley said. "So in the coming months we are going to be opening that up."
Hurley, 30, gave no details of how much users might receive or what mechanism would be used.
In October 2005, Revver -- which like YouTube offers video clips online -- announced plans to attach advertising to user-submitted videos and give their creators a cut of the profit.
Hurley said that when YouTube started, he and the site's co-founders -- Steve Chen and Jawed Karim -- thought revenue sharing would build a community of users motivated by making money rather a love of videos.
But, he said, as the site has grown, executives have come to see remuneration as a way of improving content.
Hurley spoke on the last full day of the World Economic Forum, which brings together political, social and business leaders.
