It's beginning to look to me as if the $1.65 billion that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) paid for YouTube was the deal of the century. It seems that every website I visit now makes reference to some manner of video clip which resides on that site. What I find most pleasing about the whole matter is that NBC has reconsidered (or added to) their YouTube attitude. Since the passing of the YouTube-Saturday Night Live-Lazy Sunday misadventure, in which a particularly popular Saturday Night Live skit was viewed some 5 million times before being pulled down from the site, NBC (NYSE: GE) has developed a working relationship with YouTube. To me, this helps explain why GE has kept hold of NBC.

An article on Buzz Machine sheds some light on how YouTube and Internet video as a whole are influencing the political arena. With a broad base of computer literate users and streaming video watchers as potential constituents, politicians are becoming video savvy, at a level which they never have been before. Additionally, many top level journalists who are deeply involved in the internet are now introducing the practice of "vlogging," which is web blogging via video snippets. (I'm ready for my closeup!)

Of course not all the news about YouTube is pretty. There are still a plethora of copyright infringement questions that need to be sorted out and there have also been accusations made that YouTube, by its nature, may actually cause bad behavior on the part of some numb-minded ne'er-do-well exploitation geeks who seek their fifteen seconds of glory on the site. I guess the thrill of shaving your drunk buddy's eyebrows and logging it on the web is just too overpowering for some kids.

In any case, it looks to me like YouTube is on a one-way rocket trip upward and as anyone would expect, it's Google that's going along for the ride. If you have Google shares you might want to consider holding on to them a while longer. Or better yet, you might wish to consider adding a few more. I still think that Google shares will split two for one this year. If they do, I hope someone vlogs about it.

I learned something from Jessica Lee Rose, aka Lonelygirl15, aka Bree. If you make a lie pretty enough, no one will mind being deceived.

Jessica started posting her videos, in character as the 16-year-old home-schooled Midwestern teenager Bree, on YouTube. She used the screenname Lonelygirl15 and became a huge success.

Then one day, she was outed as an actress living in New Zealand. Zoinks! But instead of angering fans and being excoriated by Oprah, Jessica only became more famous and (strangely) kept posting daily videos, still in character. She now posts on her own site, lonelygirl15.com, and hobnobs with the rich and conventionally famous.

Now her video series has reached true entertainment status and she's got guest stars -- most glamorously, Katharine McPhee of American Idol fame. She appears as a girl Bree's roommate (and love interest) Daniel brings home from a bar. Rose is so well-loved despite her deceptions that she was named #1 in Forbes.com's "The Web Celeb 25" ranking, and has been reported to have secured movie deals. Want more indications of fame? A recent Law & Order episode had a character reminiscent of Bree (in the episode, the video star is kidnapped in an elaborate scripted ploy to get "ransom" money from viewers, and inevitably, someone is murdered).

Bree's life, full of mystery and glamour in the midst of an ordinary teen's existence, is everyone's dramatization of their own problems -- the makings of a blockbuster, in my opinion. If you're going to lie on the internet, it seems, make your lie dramatic and beautiful and everyone will love it.