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.

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.

Jawed Karim is supplying one answer to the question, "what if one of the market's biggest success stories was your idea... but no one knew your name?" For him, the answer is, "tell everyone!"

Karim was a co-founder of YouTube, along with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. The general concept for the site, he says, was all his. But he stepped back from day-to-day involvement once the company became formal enough to have job titles, opting instead to embrace the student lifestyle once again. Once he went back to Stanford, he "advised" YouTube while his former PayPal colleagues did most of the legwork.

When Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) came a-knocking, Karim wasn't involved at all, although it seems as if he's going to benefit from the $1.7 billion price tag; he did retain an ownership stake in YouTube.

So now Karim has money (twice over, as all three co-founders made money when PayPal was bought by eBay, Inc. in 2002). He has that sense of pride and personal satisfaction that you must feel when your brainchild is considered and found a-billion-and-change-worth of worthy by the market. What he doesn't have, though, is fame.

Why don't you make a movie about it, Karim? You could put it on this thing called YouTube ...