Google is making it easier to host videos on YouTube with the release of some new API’s that will allow people to upload, watch, search, and comment on the videos on other Websites. With these new API’s, developers will be able to do all of the following without having to go to Youtube (or directing their traffic to YouTube!):
- Upload / Edit videos remotely
- Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc)
- Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
- Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales
- Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software
In this way, webmasters can now show free interactive videos on their own sites that are hosted and maintained by Google via YouTube servers.
This is different then what we had available in the past as the YouTube videos viewed on non-YouTube websites, although hosted on YouTube, where non-interactive and sent your traffic to YouTube.
One disadvantage is that your videos will also be available on the YouTube platform, which is good for traffic, but not good if you did not want to share the video content with YouTube. YouTube will also not be revenue sharing on the ads displayed in and around the videos at this stage, although this could be something to expect in the future says.
I got some of my information from Techcrunch thanks to Andy’s email :)
Also, you can find the original news release on the youtube blog
And if you are wandering how these Youtube APIs are being used, check out the case studies here!
One interesting use of the new APIs I noticed is the wikihow project.
Jack Herrick, Founder of wikiHow says: “wikiHow’s mission is to build and share the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Adding YouTube to our site will allow members of our community to share and learn how-to information in a totally new way.”
If you like, read more on the wikihow project here.
