YouTube Founder Resigns From Operations Role

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley is stepping down from day-to-day operations, and moving to an advisory role at the leading video-sharing site.

Hurley launched YouTube in early 2005, along with fellow co-founders Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. Salar Kamangar, formerly VP of web applications at parent company Google, now is overseeing daily management responsibilities and operations.

"Right now I am in the process of transitioning into the role of adviser, stepping down, still being involved in the company, but it's given me an opportunity to work on new projects," he said at the F.ounders international web conference in Dublin on Thursday night, according to the Guardian. "We were lucky enough to find Salar, who was one of the founders of [Google] AdWords. He is responsible for the whole thing. For me he was someone who was going to be able to drive the business."

Google acquired YouTube for about $1.65 billion in stock in 2006. Under terms of the acquisition, Hurley was only required to stay on for 18 months, he said. Although he declined to reveal any specifics, Hurley has been working on another idea for about two years, he said at the conference.

"I think you will see a point where the traditional model of advertising on TV or advertising online will go and advertisers will cover one program, no matter what platform it's being broadcast on. You'll see the same ads whether you are watching it on your TV, your computer, or your phone," Hurley told attendees.

Chen, formerly CTO at the video microblogging site, left YouTube in June 2009 according to his LinkedIn profile, but moved on to other engineering projects within Google. He remains at Google, his LinkedIn profile shows. Karim, who left YouTube in 2006, according to his LinkedIn profile, founded Youniversity Ventures in 2007, and remains principal at the venture capital firm.

On Thursday, YouTube celebrated reaching the 1 billion subscription mark, when an online viewer clicked on a video by MachinimaSports.

"In fact, there is so much subscription activity that there are over a billion subscription notification emails sent every week and 15 YouTube channels have crossed the one million subscriber mark," said Georges Haddad, product marketing manager, in a company blog.