The gentlemen at Valleywag have footage of this week's all-YouTube episode of Oprah. (Et tu, Oprah?) Steve Chen and Chad Hurley tell the now famous story about their company's conception. It seems, according to them, that during a SF dinner party at Chen's "friends filmed each other with videocameras (!), and then realized the videos were hard to share." Then like magic -- poof! -- YouTube came about, turning a voyeuristic dinner host into a multigazillionaire.
But it turns out that this is a damned lie. Jawed Karim, one of the founder who was squeezed out, claims that that's just not true, that that tale is a creation of YouTube's first publicist. (A lying publicist? No!) Read more about how YouTube was supposedly, really, seriously here.
But in the end, whether any of this is fact is of little concern. Take note, Chen and Hurley: Oprah does not take kindly to people who lie to her on-air. She is not someone you want to fuck with, regardless of your standing in the SV. (Unless, of course, you're famous and trying to pull off some semblance of heterosexuality, then she's more than game for such fibbery.)
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