Monday, May 17, 2010

YouTube, Now 5, Shows Signs of Growing Up - NYTimes.com

A YouTube snapshot – it may even break even this year

That cornucopia of content appears to be turning YouTube — considered by many to be a risky investment when it was bought for $1.65 billion at the end of 2006 — into one of Google’s smartest acquisitions. On Monday, YouTube will celebrate its fifth birthday by announcing it has passed two billion video views a day; YouTube said it reached the one billion mark in October.

Bolstering YouTube’s growing audience is the popularity of live broadcasts, like the recent Indian Premier League cricket matches, and the integration of instructional videos directly into Google search results.

[…]

Finally, Mr. Hurley tipped his entrepreneurial hat to a chaotic, controversial and suddenly popular site that resembles the YouTube of five years ago: ChatRoulette. The site, created by an 18-year-old from Moscow, Andrey Ternovskiy, allows people around the world to engage in random, instantaneous one-on-one conversations.

YouTube, Now 5, Shows Signs of Growing Up - NYTimes.com

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