Chad Hurley, the guy with the surfer-dude name and the hottest Internet-media property going — namely YouTube, home of classics such as the Diet Coke and Mentos video — seems to be reading from the standard Web 2.0 (or Bubble 2.0) playbook in his recent media appearances, including his It Girl role at Allen & Co.’s media confab earlier this month and a recent interview with Internet columnist Bambi Francisco of Marketwatch (Chad Hurley, Bambi Francisco — you can’t make this kind of stuff up).
Are you going to sell, Chad? No way — we want to remain independent, we’re trying to build value, long-term vision, etc. etc. (see previous playbook entries under Facebook and Skype); Your company’s value has soared to $1-billion or so, hasn’t it Chad? I don’t really know — we’re focused on long-term value, we don’t think about that kind of thing, etc. etc. But then Chad slipped a little and said he might consider an IPO, and you could almost hear the sharks swarming for the chum in the water, some of them looking to cut Mr. YouTube down to size and some eager to help him fleece, er… assist the investing public. Would it fly? Some IPOs haven’t done so well (hat tip to Paul Kedrosky for the link)
Meanwhile, competitor Revver — which has a similar setup but takes the additional step of sharing revenue with those who upload videos (which is why the Diet Coke and Mentos boys asked people to upload their clip to Revver rather than YouTube) — has gotten additional financing from the funding arms of cable giant Comcast and Ted Turner’s new-media outfit. Draper Fisher Jurvetson is also a backer of Revver, as is William Randolph Hearst III (who spent some of the family dough during Bubble 1.0 too, by investing in cable-Internet flameout @Home).
Is Chad’s potential IPO a sign of Bubble 2.0? The inimitable Ze Frank has some thoughts.