YouTube boss wants to deliver a 'personalised channel' and repeat the years-ago trick of CNN and MTV
The explosive growth of You Tube, founded just six years ago, makes it Google's best buy. Now the new man in charge has set out his vision for where the video site goes next
That is the part of the vision of the new boss of YouTube, Salar Kamangar, who became CEO in October after YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley left the company now owned by Google.
In a rare interview, Kamangar talked to the San Jose Mercury News at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, California. He said of the future of the third most-visited site on the internet, "We want to move YouTube from being a site organised around individual videos to one that's organised around sets of videos.
"Think about that as channels, and you can think about that as two different kinds of channels.
"We want to deliver a personalised stream of videos for you that is specific to what you are interested in. That is one kind of channel -- the personalised channel."
The other kind of channel, said Kamangar, was more traditional. He pointed out that in the early '80s, you had three or four TV networks. Today those three or four networks are responsible for just 25 percent of viewership: the cable networks are responsible for all the rest.
"When you think about the impact cable had, we think we're in a position to have a similar impact for video delivery," said Kamangar.
Right now, the fraction of traffic that is web video is small relative to broadcast and cable, "but it's growing at a fast rate. What's amazing is that the Web enables you to build a kind of channel that wouldn't have made sense for cable, in the same way cable enabled you to build content that wouldn't have made sense for broadcast.
"You couldn't have done CNN with the broadcast networks; you couldn't have done MTV (Music Television) with the broadcast networks."
Kamangar, an Iranian American, was Google's ninth employee. He led the team that created AdWords, the search keyword advertising programme that remains Google's largest single source of revenue. He wrote the company's first business plan, started its early legal and finance functions, and helped found Google's product team.
Google bought YouTube, founded in February 2005, for $1.65 billion in November 2006. It was quite a buy! One year later, as the site powered ahead, it was estimated that YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.
In May last year, more than 14 billion videos were viewed, a monthly figure bound to be substantially higher now. YouTube says 35 hours of new videos are uploaded every minute - around three quarters from outside the US .
About two years ago, Kamangar moved over to YouTube, becoming the video site's CEO in October.
Samangar talked about how YouTube fits into the rest of Google.
"We'd like to think of YouTube as a part of Google, with very overlapping goals and values. We're a fundamental part of the advertising business for Google. There is search and there is display and there is video. And when you think about where the big opportunity is on the advertising side, you think YouTube and video is a very large part of that.
"We are very integral to Google's strategic goals, but we're also able to do things in a way that makes sense for the YouTube brand and culture for users. We're trying to find the right balance -- the details matter a lot -- but I think what we're heading toward and what we benefit from is both being a space where we can think and run like a startup, and at the same time being able to draw on the great resources of Google."