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Oprah is the New Skateboarding Bulldog



Tuesday was all rainbows, butterflies, and warm fuzzies as Oprah flashed her spotlight on this wacky Internet video phenomenon-thing the kids are calling YouTube. Winfrey toasted the baby billionaire founders of the company, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, on Tuesday's show where she also welcomed a stream of Web celebs like the Dirty Dancing wedding couple, the phone salesman opera whiz, and other such attention-grabbing leprechauns who've made the digital platform a healthy $1.6 billion.

The show was timed synergistically with O's announcement that she too would be grabbing a piece of the pie with her very own YouTube channel, sure to be packed with troves of her inspirational blather. (Oddly, the clips on her channel are not embeddable, one of the features that makes YouTube so viral.) We're sure there were high-fives aplenty in the greenroom as Oprah, Chen, and Hurley grinned and threw piles of greenbacks at one another.

But Wednesday morning it was another story, as YouTube faced a PR crisis with news that the Finnish teen who shot seven of his classmates today had detailed the plot on YouTube just hours earlier.

Unfortunately for the shooting victims, it appears the world was too distracted by the likes of Tyson the skateboarding bulldog to take heed of the video's message and put a stop to the crime. (That dog totally shreds!)

By Sarah Horne   11/08/07 10:00 AM
Related: Oprah, Pop, Scandal, The Idiot Box, Youtube
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