Fortune interviews Steve Chen and Chad Hurley:
The important question: How are you going to make money?
Hurley: We’re going to sell sponsorships and direct advertisements. But we are building a community, and we don’t want to bombard people with advertising.
Chen: If we wanted to, we could instantly turn this into $10 million in revenue per month by running pre-rolls [short video ads] on the videos. But at the same time, we’re going to make sure that whatever revenue model we’ve built is going to be something that’s accepted by the users.
Hurley: We’re building relationships with studios, networks, and labels because they’re looking for ways to reach new audiences, and we have a great platform and a great stage to make that happen.
