REVENUE OUTLOOK FOR YOUTUBE STAYS FUZZY

Chad Hurley is the man who wanted a site to post home videos on the Internet and, with his friend Steve Chen, set up YouTube and became a billionaire.

The accidental empire created in February 2005 now hosts 13 hours of new content every minute and carries with it a weight of expectation and responsibility that does not always seem to sit well with the 31-year-old.

YouTube may have been adopted as the Internet’s premier destination for video, but it’s not clear how it will make money, particularly given that the cost of hosting videos is not cheap.

What’s more, video advertising has not taken off and Google, the company’s owner, remains remarkably coy about the business that it bought for $1.65 billion two years ago.

Google doesn’t break out figures for YouTube. Hurley, for his part, declined to reveal any details either.

The only thing that Wall Street does know about YouTube was disclosed in its last regulatory filing, which said it had “yet to realize significant revenue benefits from our acquisition of YouTube.”

Om Malik, a blogger and analyst, estimates that YouTube revenue should reach about $125 million this year, up from $80 million a year earlier. The now-defunct Bear Stearns had the 2007 number at $90 million.

Hurley argues for patience and says no one should expect a silver-bullet solution to YouTube’s hunt for revenue.

“We are happy with our progress but there will not necessarily be a single answer when it comes to monetizing the site,” he said in an interview.

“There will be a suite of solutions,” he said.

He also made clear that the plan has long evolved past a belief that video advertising will be the dominant form of income.

“Video will definitely be part of the answer,” Hurley insisted, but there are hints of an enhanced search offering, too.

Is the content appealing enough for advertisers, given so much of it is amateur, or illegally copied?

With the typical Internet entrepreneur’s faith in the democratic nature of the media, Hurley said “YouTube will always be a great mix of the professional and the amateur,” although money will predominantly be made from one of the 900-channel, revenue-sharing partnerships that YouTube has with media companies.

The problem, of course, is that YouTube’s home-video liberalism is precisely what makes the site so popular. Times of London