YouTube to become YouProfit

The internet video site YouTube says it plans to start sharing its revenue with users. Chad Hurley, co-founder of the site, said YouTube is working on developing ways for its users, who upload videos on to the site, to be paid for the content they have created.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday, Hurley said: "We are getting an audience that is large enough to give us an opportunity to support and foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users. So, in the coming months, we are going to be opening that up."

Hurley, 30, who became a multimillionaire when YouTube was bought for $1.65bn (£84m) by the search engine Google last November, did not say how such a payment system would work or how much money users would receive.

YouTube is not the first site to offer money to content providers. In October 2005, Revver, which like YouTube offers video clips online, announced plans to attach advertising to user-submitted videos and give their content creators an equal cut of the profits.