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YouTube.Com Mania! (article update)

The Business Life 2006 at http://www.fortune.com/ (September 4, 2006 Issue)

"DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL"

Meet the stars of YOUTUBE, the undisputed king of online video sharing. Can they monetize this craze?

Chen and Hurley --- "They've proven to be trustworthy partners," says NBC Universal's Jeff Zucker of the YouTube founders.

It was a typical lunctime at Michael's, the Manhattan restaurant and Big Media salon --- a well-groomed scrum of editors, publisher's, moguls, and TV stars. Onto the pitch walked the hottest new-media duo of the moment: Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, the scruffy, denim-clad founders of the online video bazaar known as http://www.youtube.com/ . Having launched the breakout winner in the web video-sharing crazed, the two were in town for an old-fashioned media blitz (Charlie Rose, "Good Morning America", http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/ , Fortune) and to cut some ad deals. Of course, no one in Michael's recognized them, nor did these mild-mannered entrepreneurs particularly care. But everyone in the place knew their site, and someone there may one day own it. YouTube now streams a staggering 100 million videos a day posted by its users: TV show excerpts, Michael Jordan highlights, war diaries, Nirvana concert bootlegs, you name it. Web videos are the reigning workplace time waster, a dangerous addiction. By one count, YouTube serves up 57% of all videos watched online in the U.S. So potent is YouTube's traffic that "MySpace" - http://www.myspace.com/ --- the social-networking collosus that helped it get its start --- has even tried to block it, and once-wary media companies are talking partnership. In February, NBC ( http://www.nbc.com/ ) demanded the site take down an SNL - Saturday Night Live ( http://www.saturdaynightlive.com/ ) clip called - "Lazy Sunday". By July, the network had struck a deal with the site to promote its fall lineup. "They've proven," says NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker, "to be trustworthy partners."

But YouTube isn't yet a profitable business. It produces revenues --- Chen and Hurley won't say how much --- from advertising. However, its hosting costs, which they also won't disclose, are huge, and the $11.5 million anted up by venture firm Sequoia Capital will only go so far. Hurley and Chen talk of "opportunities" to grow their top line, but some skeptics, notably their web rivals, say costs and copyright issues will eventual do them in.

Maybe. But YouTube's scale counts alot, particularly when the competition has names like http://www.google.com/ and http://www.yahoo.com/ . "Your ad model means nothing if you don't have the audience," says Hurley, and his logic makes sense to knowledgeable observers. "I love YouTube," says New York VC Fred Wilson. "Say what you will about how they did it --- copyrighted content, piggybacking on MySpace --- they've made it to that rarefied air where the content will keep coming because they've got the eyeballs."

YouTube video idols "Ask a Ninja," ( http://askaninja.com/ ) - the work of two L.A. comics, went national on YouTube.

As did Jud Laippy's "Evolution of Dance," ( http://www.evolutionofdance.com/ ) the most viewed YouTube vid of all time.

Hurley, 29, and Chen, 25, met in Silicon Valley while working at http://www.paypal.com/ in 1999. The idea for YouTube was spawned six years later at a PayPal alumni dinner party where the guests bemoaned the difficulty of sharing videos from their gatherings, something easily done with digital photos. The quest to solve that problem led to YouTube's February 2005 launch. The original notion was that folks would share their home videos, but early on, clips from TV shows and movies began showing up --- YouTube was becoming America's collective "TiVo" http://www.tivo.com/ . With copyright issues unresolved, that became both opportunity and problem. Says Hurley: "People relate us to Napster - http://www.napster.com/," the music-sharing service shut down by the courts. "They think this is the primary reason for our success, which is totally untrue." So, why YouTube and not its rivals? From the start YouTube was the most user-friendly and reliable site. It was the first, for example, to use Macromedia's Flash Player to streamline the viewing process. But it also understood most clearly what the people wanted, and in practice that meant a loose hand with copyrighted materials.

That could come back to haunt YouTube. Yet Big Media isn't exactly complaining. "We're seeing situations where we have the marketing side of the company posting clips to our site," says Hurley, "and then we're getting notifications from the legal side asking us to take it down." With Google, MySpace, and Yahoo joining the video game, the competition is heating up. Maybe Hurley and Chen will sell. (They roll their eyes at all the gossip, including speculation that the company is worth a billion.) For now they're in no rush and feel they can fend off the heavyweights, whom they see as conventional, stuck to the notion of embedding ads in videos. On YouTube, commercials are just more content, and Madison Avenue is poised to pay for placement. "We're coming at it from a different angle," says Hurley, adding, hopefully, "They won't see us coming."

By: Oliver Ryan (Fortune Magazine)

For more infos log onto: http://www.fortune.com/

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Bonus Read Featurette About: http://www.myspace.com/

" MYSPACE COWBOYS "

(by: Patricia Sellers)

They run the fastest-growing website on the planet. They have 100 million friends. Not bad for two guys who just wanted a place to hang out.

The site is home to 2.2 million bands, 8,000 comedians, and millions of other attention-starved wannabes.

Amazing Space --- In three years MySpace has grown from a tiny music site into a pop culture power house.

100 Million Members. A $580 Million Deal. All Because These Web Guys Needed a Place to Hang Out.

One night this past April, Tom Anderson was surfing MySpace.com, as he does for hours every night, when he spotted a link to something called "kSolo" ( http://www.ksolo.com/ ) on another member's profile page. The service, Anderson learned, lets you record karaoke online and e-mail songs to friends. A karaoke man himself (he used to be the lead singer in a band called Swank), he immediately tried kSolo --- playing a scorching anthem called "Cowboys From Hell" by the thrash-metal band Pantera. "It was cheesy but great," Anderson says. The next day, he told his business partner, Chris DeWolfe, to check out the site.

Just three years ago, the exchange between Anderson and DeWolfe might have ended there, a failed musician and a frustrated entrepreneur bonding over karaoke. But Anderson and DeWolfe don't just obsessively use MySpace, they founded it. Last July, News Corp.( http://www.newscorp.com/ )agreed to buy their company, and they decided to stay on as president and CEO.

So DeWolfe tested kSolo too, playing a Bon Jovi song from the 80's. He and Anderson quickly contacted kSolo and invited its founder, Nimrod Lev, to fly from New York to Los Angeles to meet with them. Meanwhile, they sent word to News Corp. president Peter Chernin, who told his boss, CEO Rupert Murdoch, about the music site. Within a week, the media mogul struck a deal to buy kSolo as a trinket for the expanding MySpace empire.

It's nice to have a billionaire sugar daddy to help you build the world's fastet-growing website. I't's even nicer to earn a really great living doing what most guys do for fun. Out of their personal passion for the music scene in Los Angeles, where they live, Anderson, 30, and DeWolfe, 40, created an Internet site to promote local acts and connect fans and friends ... who connected friends ... then who connected friends ... until, by last summer, 20 million people had joined MySpace. The two had a friendship based on business, then they --- quite literally --- founded a business based on friendship. And when Rupert Murdoch paid $580 million for MySpace's parent company, Anderson and DeWolfe --- though reluctant to do the deal --- each made millions!

For more on this story visit: www.fortune.com

Fortune Magazine:The Business Life Issue - September 4, 2006

~ Googled Pics of "YouTube.Com Mania" & "MySpace Cowboys" ~