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Original YouTubers rule on YouTube

Harry Fuller Executive editor, CNET News.com
Harry Fuller escaped from television work to be executive editor at CNET News.com.
Harry Fuller

Try to imagine the CEO of Disney getting onto ABC prime time. Or the head of Sony starring in a big budget movie. Not gonna happen!

But the Chad & Steve show rules at YouTube today. That would be YouTube co-founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. And it's their informal, fuzzy-looking video about the Google takeover of YouTube. They're kicking butt, traffic wise, with more than 370,000 views before midday Pacific time.

Now that's a response unlike any major corporate media exec would ever engender. In the old-media world only daily performers Oprah Winfrey or Howard Stern could command that kind of response to an informal communication to fans. I just gotta wonder if Chad and Steve got an untrained 17-year-old kid to run the camera for them. At least they were outside, not in somebody's cluttered bedroom.