The cat's not out of the bag yet but YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, who left the company in 2010, has announced that he is preparing the launch of a new video-sharing site as soon as next month. He didn't offer details or a name, hinting only that it was a video-based, content-driven platform.
"I wish (South by Southwest) was a month later because I could unveil the new product," AdWeek quoted Hurley as saying during a panel discussion.
During the Q/A session, Hurley recalled taking meetings to discuss YouTube's future at a Denny's restaurant in Redwood City, Calif. The meetings included Google founders Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin as well as Yahoo executives. Hurley and co-founder Steve Chen sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion in 2006.
"Yahoo didn't necessarily step up the way Google did," Hurley said. "We knew they were going to give us the support."
A number of video-sharing sites have cropped up since YouTube, including Daily Motion and Vimeo. With the new platform, Hurley doesn't necessarily plan to compete as much as offer a different service with a platform intended for collaboration, as opposed to individual sharing, AdWeek reports. "We're not setting up to (kill YouTube) - now," he said.
While Hurley's announcement has caught some people by surprise. Apparently Hurley and Chan have been busy raising funds for the new project through their AVOS Systems company, which secured Series A funding last year, according to Fast Company.
AVOS Systems is backed by Google Ventures and has launched a magazine discovery and creation site Zeen, PCMag reports. Its portfolio also includes Delicious, acquired from Yahoo in 2011, and its Chinese equivalent Mei.fm.
