Thaindian News

October 31, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley has officially offered to step down as CEO of the world’s most popular website for watching videos.

This decision came forth after a 5 year old site formalized the transition that had been in the pipeline for some time now, as the owner of YouTube, Google Inc, wanted more control.

Hurley, who was more into the site’s design and relationship with its users, has decided to remain an adviser for YouTube but then officially hand over the CEO’s role to Salar Kamangar, who is one of Google’s foremost employees, and is the Vice President of production management. He has been in charge of YouTube‘s day to day operations for the past two years.

Google had bought YouTube for $1.76 billion four years back, which had filled Hurley and his fellow co – founder Steve Chan and Jawed Karim’s pockets. However, Chen and Karim had left YouTube much earlier. Karim’s share was supposedly $64 million.

Kamangar is credited with creative ideas and new innovative ways to categorize the various departments and to manage the huge attraction that You Tube generates from viewers. Its most popular USP is it’s “user generated content” or UGC.

However, it has been of late, acknowledged as a strategic marketing platform and is popular with pop stars to promote their music albums. Pop stars like Justin Beiber, Lady Gaga and Eminem, Miley Cyrus, all have taken this privilege as a promotional for their videos on line. The recent record of Lady Gaga’s joint video viewers touched the 1 billion mark, with Justin Beiber coming a close second, with viewers for his video soon to touch that mark anticipated in a few days.

All this was possible only because of You Tube, and its immense popularity. The other top ten most popular videos on you tube are -56 seconds of baby biting brother’s finger, six minute ‘Evolution of Dance’ and video of baby who can’t stop laughing.

However, according to reports, Chad Hurley is “ready to witness next phase of YouTube’s growth.”