5. YouTube Nation

Eric Schmidt
Title: CEO, Google

Chad Hurley
Title: Co-founder and CEO, YouTube
Age: 29

Steve Chen
Title: Co-founder and CTO, YouTube
Age: 27

Why Them? Oh, big-media executive. You thought the late 90s were over, with all those little dot-com brats going out to get real jobs working for someone like you. Guess again. True, Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube may ultimately implode under its own weight and cybernautical largess. But let’s face facts: A year ago, YouTube was a goofy little Web site run by twenty-something hipsters Steve Chen and Chad Hurley and logging fewer than 3 million unique monthly visitors. Now, comScore World Metrix counts more than 72 million. And it’s still run by twenty-something hipsters. Admit it. You’d kill for that kind of growth for your online cable properties, and you haven’t come close to achieving it. When kids and young adults look to go somewhere to share video (and, yes, to view clips of cable TV shows), they don’t flock en masse to MSO portal sites or even many well-funded cable-programmer sites. No, they go to YouTube where they can watch LazyDork dis LonelyGirl15 while scoring clips of “The Daily Show.” Good times. The bottom line is that Chen and Hurley have tapped into that natural tendency of kids to congregate, gossip and socialize. Maybe it’s not always about QoS, high production quality or expert packaging. For kids and young adults, it’s also about community and feeling a part of something. We don’t know what will become of YouTube a year from now or whether Google will be able to turn all that traffic into big ad dollars. But this year, it’s a phenomenon. Chen and Hurley sit near the top of the 100 even though they’ve likely never heard of CableFAX. Damn kids! - MG

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