The hunt has taken the form of a crowdsourced project.  Just as the Ideas Page for YouTube was created not too long ago for the sake of the whole site, the new Product Ideas Page for the YouTube Partner Program covers this single subject.  People can submit ideas and vote on which ones they think are best.

It’s an effective process.  On the YouTube Biz Blog, Filipe Lima noted with respect to the first effort, "It was a success, receiving almost 3,000 ideas and more than 300,000 votes.  We even launched a few features that directly addressed some of the requests – namely, an HTML5 Beta (there were many HTML5 advocates who participated) and a sneak peek of our new cleaner video page (some desired a ‘less cluttered’ YouTube)."

So now we’ll see where round two takes us.

The deadline for both new submissions and votes is April 12th.  If you have any suggestions, get them in earlier, though, for the sake of giving them more time to become popular.

In short, the Partner Program (or "Programme," if you like) gives YouTube contributors a share of whatever ad revenue their videos generate.  Percentages are kept secret, total sums have been rather small, and only the most popular contributors are included, but the concept has still gone over well with most users.

Now we’ll get to see how the British respond.  On the official YouTube Blog, a post also adds, "We look forward to bringing the YouTube Partner Program to more international users in the near future."

It seems like this might, depending on those unknown terms, draw new users to the localized versions of sites.  It definitely shouldn’t chase away any old ones.  But since YouTube UK isn’t too tiny a property, the Partner Program’s success or failure in this implementation could have a big impact on how quickly it is allowed to spread.

We’ll now direct a hat tip to Mike Butcher, and allow you, if you wish, to direct your eyes to "Pancakes!"

Of course, not every kid who kicks his friend in the crotch will get to become a partner, and as it turns out, the standards may be set quite high.  “[W]e will focus on the users who have built a significant audience on YouTube (as measured by video views, subscribers, etc.) and who consistently comply with the YouTube Terms of Use,” states an entry on the YouTube Blog.

The entry also limits the Partner Program’s expansion to the United States and Canada.  Still, this development is sure to create a lot of excitement in certain communities, and should help YouTube stay ahead of sites that already share revenue.  It may, in fact, help Google’s pet put one or two of them out of business.

We’ll be interested to see where things go from here.  In the meantime, anyone’s who’s interested in becoming a partner can apply at www.youtube.com/partners, and the YouTube Blog notes, “[O]ver 100 . . . users have already been added to the program, such as tayzonday, hotforwords, apauledtv, and peteandbrian.”