YouTube, the indie poster child for the Web video craze, announced yesterday that it's now serving over 100 million videos per day. Of course, the site has been reporting astounding growth numbers since it hit critical mass last fall, but let's put this in perspective: According to yesterday's Reuters report, the typical YouTube video lasts about two minutes. The site has 20 million users, which means that the average YouTube viewer is spending five hours a month watching videos on the site. How does that translate into market share? HitWise estimates that YouTube serves roughly 60% of all videos watched online.

The big question, though, is what YouTube's worth. Screenwerk points out that "the site has started showing banner ads and has struck a deal with NBC" to post the network's clips, and thus figures it could "now fetch an astronomically high purchase price." That's the same logic that "led gossip blog Valleywag last Thursday to notice that YouTube's founders had scored invites to Herb Allen's high-powered retreat for media execs in Sun Valley, Idaho last week. Perhaps, said the blog, founders "Chad Hurley and Steve Chen got invited so that between the white-water rafting and the barbecue ... they'd sell the company to one of their camping buddies." As of Monday morning, there's no news on the deal front, but the notion is hardly farfetched.