Mainstream media are catching up with YouTube, and according to AP, it's an "Internet video sensation".
A year ago, co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen were in between jobs, a pair of twentysomething geeks running up big credit card debts as they tooled around a garage trying to develop an easy way for people to share homemade videos on the Web. Now they're flirting with fame and fortune, budding media moguls in a new entertainment era that relies on unconventional channels like YouTube -- by some measures, the leading video-sharing site, one that's cultivated a huge audience while testing the bounds of creativity, monotony, copyrights and obscenity.
The porn problem is raised, with YouTube's approach being that users report it and they remove it.
Hurley and Chen believe their community policing system is highly effective, pointing to similar practices used by online auctioneer eBay Inc. and Internet advertising service Craigslist. YouTube's technology also blocks repeat offenders from posting videos.
Comment: DV Guru has a brief comparison of 10 video sharing sites, and the Must-see blog has an even briefer list of 40.
One appeal with YouTube, as with Flickr, is that you can very easily post videos on your own blog. This Google advert seems to be the first used here.
