Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) wants to see if the attention span of its YouTube users can be stretched a bit. According to this Fortune article, YouTube seems to think that short clips might not necessarily be the backbone of long-term growth. Instead, longer videos might make the site more valuable. Why is this? Well, the article intimates that the founders of the site, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, think there's a market out there that might want something more than simple, user-generated content that focuses on the banal side of life for about three minutes per clip.

I see the point here. Google wants to figure out, once and for all, the best way to monetize its YouTube investment. This isn't the easiest thing to do, since users of YouTube are, in theory, only interested in seeing short content as fast as possible. They don't want to be burdened by ads. But YouTube is betting that maybe, just maybe, by going against theory and putting on longer material of better quality, the eyeballs will become more intrigued and will perhaps be willing to view a greater quantity of videos. It all comes down to the quality of the content.

One of the stars at the exclusive World Economic Forum (in Davos) is Chad Hurley, the co-founder of Google Inc,'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) YouTube. And, in his speech there, he definitely made some news.

That is, YouTube plans to share revenues with its users.

What will the split be? Well, that's a secret for now. However, the company will provide more details in the next couple of months.

Yes, that's smart PR. This kind of announcement will certainly build buzz.

It is also further bad news for the many other videos sites, such as Revver, which was the pioneer of the revenue-sharing model. Keep in mind that there are are more than 200 video sharing sites in the U.S. alone.

However, it looks like YouTube will need to screen videos so as to avoid copyright infringement. No doubt, this does seem like an extremely tough problem to solve. But, then again, YouTube's new owner, Google, always liked a big challenge.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

At first blush the news that YouTube, the remarkably successful video-sharing Web site, would be bought by Google for no less than $1.65 billion in stock, seemed like more back-to-the-future dot-com nonsense. The stock market is at a new record high, just like in early 2000. And a year-old start-up with no revenues and just 60 employees is selling for a billion-plus. How circa-1999!

But you can't chalk YouTube's success up to to bubblicious times. There are clear reasons why YouTube has commanded a super-sized valuations. And the reasons aren't rocket science. They are good business practice that any startup can seek to emulate.

Here are five lessons we can all learn from Google's success:

First, figure out what matters most to the success of your business and make that your top priority. For YouTube, it was building audience. Revenues didn't matter, profits even less. What mattered was that visitors were viewing 100 million video clips a day. YouTube founders now have to help Google figure out how to make money from all that traffic without alienating users, but that has turned out to be a Stage Two problem -- after the big pay day.

Don't let legal worries be too much of an impediment. Marc Cuban and other Web pundits have been fretting over YouTube's potential legal liability for copyright violations on its site. Now that's soon going to be Google's problem. But for YouTube's founders, who lacked deep pockets, the risk of major lawsuit was kept at bay simply by them being responsive and taking down content when copyright-holders objected. Maybe they got lucky. But it's clear, if they had spent too much time consulting lawyers, rather than building the site, YouTube would have never gotten off the ground.

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.