YouTube Going Mobile… in 14 Months?

Crunchgear caught an AdAge story today about YouTube founder Chad Hurley telling attendees at the OgivlyOne Digital Media Summit in New York that YouTube hopes to be able to deliver user generated short video clips to mobile devices by the end of 2007. Hurley said figuring out a monetization model on mobiles was a big part of the challenge, he said he hadn’t seen mobile advertising work yet.

I have a hard time believing that Google won’t roll out a mobile YouTube product in far less than 14 months. Particularly given this morning’s launch of Gmail for Mobile and the market imperative, the end of next year seems like too long a wait.

The mobile and Web 2.0 spaces are changing fast enough that some one is liable to grab the mobile “user generated content” space right out from under Google if launch takes that long. So it’s possible that those could just be the words of a cautious executive setting goals he knows he can meet.
There’s plenty of video being delivered to phones now so it’s probably not a technical problem.

In related news, YouTube competitor Revver said today that it became the first video sharing service to be nominated for an Emmy. Revver is a nominee in the category “Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Best Use of On Demand Technology Over the Public (open) Internet.” Revver’s video player shows short films in Flash then calls back to the Revver server to fetch a current still frame post-roll advertisement. Send Revver to phones and there will be all the more reason for high quality publishers to make the switch.