Feross Aboukhadijeh ’12 made headlines last week after creating YouTube Instant, modeled after the new Google Instant, which allows search results to pop up with each new letter typed by the user.
On Thursday, Sept. 9, Aboukhadijeh worked on his site for only a few hours before posting it on his Facebook page. The next morning, he awoke to a media frenzy, including interview requests from The Washington Post—but even more surprising, he discovered a job offer from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley on Twitter.
The Daily sat down with Aboukhadijeh shortly after his job offer went viral.
Stanford Daily (SD): Where did the idea for YouTube Instant come from?
Feross Aboukhadijeh (FA): I watched the announcement of Google Instant about a week ago. After they announced it, I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could do the same thing with videos?” It just started out as a random idea.
(SD): So how did you create YouTube Instant so quickly?
(FA): The reason why I was able to do it so quickly was because I’ve done other websites in the past, and YouTube has this easy-to-use, really powerful API—application programming interface. It’s pretty easy to take some of their functionality and build upon it and do really cool things with it. My work was actually just the glue that fits in between all the YouTube videos and the user who’s visiting my site.
(SD): What did you think when YouTube CEO Chad Hurley offered you a job?
(FA): I thought, “Is this for real?” I mean, who would offer me a job for something like this, especially over Twitter? Was this some kind of joke?
Read the full Q&A at the Stanford Daily.
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