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YouTube lubed with second-round funding

Video-sharing site receives $8 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, a financier of dot-com dreams.

Candace Lombardi
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
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Candace Lombardi
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YouTube, a video-sharing site that has caught the attention of both youths and Internet executives, has received $8 million in funding from Sequoia Capital.

YouTube lets anyone upload and share original video clips. Since its birth in early 2005, the site has reaped recognition from teens and young adults. YouTube also set off a buzz at last month's Digital Hollywood Conference in California.

Artists who upload their works, which range from do-it-yourself reality shows to tell-all Webcam monologues, can constantly monitor their popularity via the number of hits their video has brought in.

Sequoia Capital's second-round funding is a sign of YouTube's potential. Sequoia has worked with the originators of Yahoo, Google, Cisco Systems and Oracle, among others.

YouTube was originally given $3.5 million in first-round funding from Sequoia in November. YouTube has an advertising revenue model and plans to augment its infrastructure, as well as develop sales and marketing, to expand the company globally.

Alhough YouTube took down unauthorized "Saturday Night Live" content from its site in February, the company is still determining how to monitor the content given the speed at which it is growing. According to YouTube's own estimates, people are viewing more than 35 million video clips on its site each day. YouTube's lack of monitoring capability, however, could lead to legal entanglements.

 

Correction: This report incorrectly stated that YouTube is without a revenue model. In the future, the company plans to sell advertising.