Neal Mohan, a Web3-friendly executive, has been named the new CEO of YouTube, which is owned by Google. Susan Wojcicki stepped down from her position earlier this week.
After nine years at the leadership of YouTube, Wojcicki said on February 16 that she would be stepping down from her position and beginning a “new chapter” focused on her family, her health, and personal initiatives. During her tenure, she was responsible for a number of important achievements, one of which was the implementation of the revenue-sharing model.
Moving ahead, she will continue to serve as an adviser for Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company.
Mohan served as YouTube’s chief product officer before being promoted to the position of CEO. During his tenure in that role, he supervised the contentious removal of the video dislike button, the introduction of YouTube Shorts to compete with TikTok, and the launch of YouTube Music.
In the context of Web3, Mohan presented some preliminary plans in February 2022 to integrate a plethora of new features. These included Metaverse-based content experiences and content tokenization through the use of nonfungible tokens (NFTs). These plans were presented much to the chagrin of the community that despised NFTs at the time.
Mohan underlined in particular that NFTs may provide artists a new method to communicate with their audiences and establish other income streams. He said this was one of the most important aspects of NFTs. As examples, he suggested the possibility that content providers may tokenize their movies, photographs, works of art, and experiences.
“Web3 also paves the way for the creation of brand new possibilities. We think that emerging technologies such as blockchain and NFTs may make it possible for artists to cultivate more meaningful interactions with their respective audiences. In a post he made on his blog on February 10, 2022, he predicted that “together, they would be able to cooperate on new ventures and generate money in ways that were not before imaginable.”
The Web 3-related plans have not yet come to fruition, despite the fact that they were supposed to possibly roll out the previous year. However, given that Mohan is now managing the company, it is possible that another push may be made in the near future.
In the wake of the announcement that Mohan would take over as CEO of YouTube, there has been a surprising lack of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) emanating from the vocal skeptics of NFTs on Twitter. These individuals are typically quick to flame anything to do with reports of mainstream connections to the technology.