Six years after selling YouTube to Google in a deal valued at $1.65 billion, co-founder Chad Hurley is ready to jump back in the online video business with something that's flexible enough "for people to work together and create content." The reveal came out of a Q&A session with Digg founder and Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose at the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference and, unfortunately, it was very light on details.
When asked whether he's taking a second crack at creating a better YouTube, Hurley went on to explain that he wasn't setting up to kill YouTube now, but rather wanted to create a new service that's better suited for collaboration. It's not clear what that might mean but it won't be too long before we find out, with Hurley noting that if South by Southwest was a month later he could have unveiled the new product.
Beyond that brief teaser Hurley also shared some details on how the YouTube acquisition came to be, recalling how acquisition discussions with executives from both Yahoo and Google took place at Denny's.
Even after the acquisition Hurley remained on board as CEO until October 2010, and stuck around in an advisory role for a while after that. He's also embarked in other ventures including a service to discover and create magazines called Zeen and trying to bring life back into Delicious after acquiring it from Yahoo.