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Jon Russell
Jon Russell was Asia Editor for The Next Web from 2011 to 2014. Originally from the UK, he lives in Bangkok, Thailand. You can find him on T Jon Russell was Asia Editor for The Next Web from 2011 to 2014. Originally from the UK, he lives in Bangkok, Thailand. You can find him on Twitter, Angel List, LinkedIn.
Buried among a weekend of panel discussions, product launches and parties at SXSW is the news that YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley is on the brink of jumping back into the Web video space with a new service.
Six and a half years after Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in a move that, while questioned at the time, has proved to be an astute piece of business, Hurley says he’s a month away from launching a platform to complement YouTube which is specifically for content collaborations.
It sounds interesting — so long as we’re not talking MC Hammer meets Psy-style collaborations — particularly when considering the aforementioned Korean singer earned more than $8 million in YouTube royalties alone for his ‘Gangnam Style’ hit. That’s in no small part to the many imitations which it took a cut of ad revenue from.
Alas, all we know so far are the words that AdWeek caught in Austin:
“I wish [South by Southwest] was a month later because I could unveil the new product,” Hurley said during a Q&A with Digg founder and Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose on Saturday afternoon. Without going into too much detail, he said the product is “primarily video-based…and gives flexibility for people to work together and create content.”
We’ve seen stealth launches from Hurley before of course. Last April he teased details of Zeen, a service to “discover and create beautiful magazines”, which launched in beta in July.
It seems likely that the new product will be launched out of AVOS, the Google Ventures-backed company that Hurley set up with fellow YouTube founder Steve Chen. In addition to Zeen, AVOS also owns Delicious, which it bought from Yahoo in 2011, and Mei.fm, a Chinese version of Delicious that launched in April 2012.
Related: YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley talks Delicious, acquisitions and his push into China
Hat tip Gizmodo
Headline image via Joi / Flickr
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