YouTube may pay users for videos

Video sharing site YouTube could start paying users to upload videos, according to co-founder Chad Hurley. 

Hurley told the World Economic Forum in Davos that YouTube is looking at possible revenue sharing. 

"We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support and foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users," he said. "So in the coming months, we are going to be opening that up."

Hurley claimed that there had been no payment to begin with because the site wanted to build a big enough community first.

"We did not want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward because when you start giving money to people from day one, the people you attract will just switch to the next provider that's paying more," he said.

"We feel that we are at the scale now that we will be able to do that and still have a true community based around video."

However, Hurley did not elaborate on how the revenue would be generated nor what percentage would be given to users.

It is also not known whether users would be paid based on advertising running on the same webpage or whether commercials would be added into the video itself.

YouTube was bought by Google for US$1.65bn in stock in October 2006.

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