YouTube.com's Hurley attains media mogul status

This week in Sun Valley, there is the big confab for media moguls. The VIP list includes such biggies as Rupert Murdoch, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Michael Eisner. The event has been around since 1982 and is hosted by the premier investment bank, Allen & Co.

However, this year's big draw is: YouTube.com. This company was founded on February 14, 2005. By November 2005, the company received funding from Sequoia, which is the VC firm that backed Google. Now, YouTube is the killer destination site for video, with about 100 million video views per day.

YouTube's representative at the Allen & Co. event is Chad Hurley, the co-founder (he is a mere 29 years old).

Typically, for an upstart company like YouTube, the goal of Chad would be to do some guerilla networking and try to strike some deals. Well, in this case, it is the sluggish traditional media companies clamoring to get the attention of Chad.

It's kind of ironic. Just imagine if in, say 1999, Allen & Co. invited an online music sharing site to its event? Most likely, the traditional media companies would have used it as a way to serve lawsuits.

Well, a lot has changed since then. Media realizes that litigation is pointless. Rather, media needs to embrace these new channels. And, so far, companies like NBC – which recently struck a deal with YouTube – has done just that.

So, in the next few weeks, expect some interesting deals from YouTube. Hey, apparently, Chad has already had a face-to-face with CBS.