before they were stars

Lately there's been a lot of noise about YouTube, the wildly popular video-sharing site that just got acquired by Google for about $1.6 billion. A lot of the noise has been about the two principal founders and how fantastically rich they have become. This is nothing new. However, there is an interesting subplot surrounding Jawed Karim, a third founder who left the company to finish his master's degree at Stanford. Most of the articles focus on how he's not going to be as rich as the first two; don't worry, though, he's still getting a nice chunk of change.

The interesting part is that most of my friends and I knew about Jawed Karim way before YouTube was even a twinkle in the the three soon-to-be-millionaires' eyes. You see, way back in the days of Napster, before anybody knew or cared about the RIAA, Jawed created a LAN-crawling program called MP3 Voyeur. It was in wide use throughout my freshman dorm, and to those of us with T1 lines and empty wallets, Jawed was a hero. No need to spend time clicking through every folder on the network neighborhood to find Doggystyle or "Paradise City;" just run MP3 Voyeur, sit back, and select the files you want, available immediately over a lightning-quick local connection. This is how we found, for example, the legendary "Andrew K's Smooth Shit" folder of over-the-top makeout songs.

It's refreshing to know that YouTube is a logical evolution of MP3 Voyeur, and it's good to see the man cashing in by staying true to his roots.

With YouTube, Grad Student Hits Jackpot Again [New York Times]
MP3 Voyeur [jawed.com]