Stanford student creates YouTube Instant, gets job offer from YouTube CEO

Stanford student Feross Aboukhadijeh, in a nod to the recent unveiling of Google Instant, has created a real-time search engine for YouTube videos — and it’s caught the attention of YouTube CEO Chad Hurley.

After spotting YouTube Instant, Hurley Tweeted over to Aboukhadijeh, saying he loved the idea and asking if he wanted a job.

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Aboukhadijeh, who goes by the Twitter handle FreeTheFeross, sent a message back to find out if Hurley was serious about the offer — because, after all, this is the Internet. It looks like Hurley was, indeed, quite serious.

Aboukhadijeh announced the launch of YouTube Instant on Y Combinator’s Hacker News feed, a news aggregation site similar to Digg and Reddit. It behaves much the same way Google Instant does — as a viewer types in the video they are looking for, the engine guesses the video and begins playing it immediately.

YouTube, which was acquired by google four years ago for about $1.65 billion, might finally turn profitable this year according to some analyst predictions.

We’ve reached out for confirmation from YouTube and will update when we hear back.