(Update: Comment from YouTube added below). In case there was still any doubt that Google wants to use YouTube to host all the video on the Web, it’s announcement earlier today to broaden its APIs makes it clear that is its goal. Once again, instead of making it easier to search videos elsewhere, Google is making it easier to host videos on YouTube. Except that the new APis allow people to upload, watch, search, and comment on the videos on other Websites. The key here is that the videos themselves are hosted on Youtube’s servers. This brings Google back full circle to the initial strategy for Google Video, which originally required videos to be uploaded directly to Google in order to become indexed. YouTube is gradually replacing Google Video—that is where most people upload videos anyway—but getting as much video from the rest of the Web onto its servers allows it to do many more things with it than if it simply indexed the videos elsewhere. It can search them better and throw up ads against them.
Specifically, the new APIs allow Web developers to:
* Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
* 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
YouTube is not just white-labeling its video-hosting infrastructure for other sites, devices, and desktop applications. It is offering video-hosting for free. This could prove highly disruptive to other video-hosting platforms such as Brightcove, Maven Networks (now part of Yahoo), and Move Networks. Partners already using the APIs include Animoto, Casio, Electronic Arts, Helio, KickApps, Slide, and TiVo. Yes, you can now watch YouTube on TiVo.
Of course, it is not exactly free. The videos will also be available on YouTube, where Google will make money from any associated ads. It is not clear how the ad revenue will be split, or even if it will be. There is nothing in the API that allows for a Website to insert their own ads. So that is a big question mark. (More on that after I speak with a YouTube exec later in today).
Update: YouTube product manager Jim Patterson confirms that there is no revenue-sharing built into the API, although he also points out that the API is open to YouTube Partners, who do share in the advertising dollars. He says:
We are not introducing any fundamentally new way to monetize. Any video that is uploaded through our API is treated exactly as on YouTube.com. In general if a video is uploaded to YouTube, in some cases we serve ads into that on YouTube.com. When people embed those we reserve rights to serve ads in the future.
It is not a white-label service. We do offer a hosting service, but it is not a direct alternative to the companies that you mention. There are some big differences. It is a YouTube-branded experience. It is free. The price you pay for using it is you must participate in the YouTube community.
In other words, YouTube feels that for the most part it is enough to direct traffic to third-party sites and let them tap into YouTube’s huge audience.
Yesterday, I put up a post asking readers to guess what YouTube’s announcement was going to be and offered a free iPod Shuffle to the first person to guess correctly. Although a lot of people were hoping for an announcement of better-quality video or a partnership with Hulu (that was my guess), only a handful got it right. Only the 237 comments submitted before YouTube made its announcement public at midnight PT were eligible for the prize.
Dan Frommer of Silicon Alley Insider pointed to a post of his last week that hinted at the white-labeling deal. But he wasn’t the first one with the right answer to comment on my post. (Sorry, Dan. No iPod for you, but you do get a link). Other commenters got parts of the announcement right—API for third-party uploads, partnership with TiVo, incorporating an upload-to-Youtube button on a a digital camera (Casio), integration with a video game platform (Spore)—but not the whole thing. The first commenter to really nail it, and the winner of the iPod Shuffle is Blake Machado (aka Balke Macho), No. 57, whose comment was:
YouTube as a platform. More developer tools/better APIs to power video on other sites (channels). Upload from third-party sites, search within the site, some kind of monetization model to go with it that will be announced but not yet released.
We are still waiting to learn about that monetization part, but everything else is spot on, and Macho was the first to really spell out the platform ambitions behind this announcement.
See all
Post
http://video.google.com/videop.....9021288014
I want to watch code monkeys from beginning to end, not in 10 minute increments. Google video will continue to exist because of that.
Yeah…congrats to Balke but I was he was dead wrong! I was hoping for something more exciting (curse)…
Congrats Balke.
Thanks Erick , you are making your posts very interesting and interactive….
API would make them more popular.. Good move( I thought they had one )
Cheers, Nag
maven is part of Yahoo, not YouTube
Smart move. definitely a smart move
Awesome! This is an area where we had planned to be “first” at a used-to-be-in-existence-high-quality-video-site.
Great minds…great minds. Now if YouTube would just up that quality…
-Blake
Why is Techmeme quiet on Hulu.com full release that happened today?
The international news medias (at least their websites) including CNN (earlier in the morning) are all over this, with intl coverage seeing this as a internet/media changing moment.
Nice.
Very exciting news– and huge applications for citizen journalism. GroundReport will be acting on this.
So who is the winner for 2GB iPod Shuffle
? Damn.. i missed it 
already!
I can see why some publishers like getting money for their videos, but for most of the publishers on YouTube and similar sites, it seems like more of a launching pad for a future career. Do the couple pennies or dollars these guys make a big difference. I know that I put videos or blogs up is for the passion of writing or taping something funny. Not so that Papa Google can pay me a couple pennies. I say just let these websites keep the money and make the user experience better.
INQdrop
http://www.tech-exposed.com
I wish we could hit the rewind button and have the old Youtube before the google takeover.
Laloj
ifood.tv launched their new video player platform that allows all these interactive features pretty much. users upload their videos and can embed the same anywhere - the video can be commented upon, voted, forwarded right from any site from within the player itself and it all show up on ifood.tv . Also the video displays the recipes and ingredients along with the video - something a youtube player doesnt. infact the player is such that you can watch everything within the player, interact with it (through comments, votes, etc) and not even come to the ifood website !!
i am still way confused over this, mabe when you talk to them today it will become clearer.
In the youtube api doc, there’s this “Country” | “Region ID” table, where “Taiwan” and “Hong Kong” (but no “China”) are listed under the “Country” column..
Point being, politically speaking, why not just use “Region” | “Region ID” ?
or, technically speaking, why not “Country” | “Country ID”?
YOUTUBE must figure out a revenue share with advertising for all content. If they do not, you will continue to see content producers creating their own pre/post roll ads. Then if Youtube decides to place additional ads in the clips you will have a situation where its 2minutes of ads and 30 seconds of content. We always place our own branding at the start and end of our clips before we upload to any site….
“The first commenter to really nail it, and the winner of the iPod Shuffle is Blake Machado (aka Balke Macho), No. 57, whose comment was:
YouTube as a platform. More developer tools/better APIs to power video on other sites (channels). Upload from third-party sites, search within the site, some kind of monetization model to go with it that will be announced but not yet released.”
Haha Blake congrats. I totally miss you and what we would have also been releasing right about now.
This is an extension of their cellphone strategy.
we’d be happy to engrave the Shuffle you’re giving away for free. We predict google is going to get into the laser customization business in a big way. Or not.
Well, if search engines are good enough for Kleiner and customization is good enough for Kleiner, why not?
Blake, it’s all yours if you want it. etchstar.com
good guess. if you have predictions in the stock market, email me.
Wait, I said third party uploads and I’m #43 … what gives? I only guessed because I’ve been bugging the guys at the YouTube platform to give us this capability for the last year or so.
This sounds great - love the customization to the player, but it appears that their terms of use haven’t kept up with it. Check out this excerpt from 4-F:
“… you may not modify, build upon, or block any portion of the Embeddable Player in any way.”
So, does this mean that if you start using the new bag of tricks, you’re actually violating the terms of use?
Powerful move by Google. While I was hoping they would partner with Hulu to get more “professional” content, there is still tremendous power in making YouTube a platform: http://fishtrain.com/2007/10/1.....t-matters/
If you were unable to upload videos to youtube before this shiny new API, then you can’t code and should turn in your keyboard as soon as possible.
Duke, it was a violation of ToS and if you have a large scale site, you would have been shut down. I gather from your comment that you never actually tried it, or never ran a large scale site.
Awesome! This is going to be helpful to a lot of niche social networks.
@Ben - I would love to take you up on a free engraving. This shuffle is my consolation prize, seeing as how we weren’t able to get the Stage6 Platform out due to the site shut down. I’m thinking the Stage6 logo would be appropriate.
As for stock picks, well, those are a lot harder to predict than product releases. I’ll keep you posted. Maybe I’ll put up my portfolio somewhere.
@Dawn - Hey! Glad you caught this. Miss you too and hope all is well.
-Blake
We’ve been evaluating video platforms for our marketplace and this new set of APIs will likely seal the deal to go with YouTube.
“Except that the new APIs allow people to upload, watch, search, and comment on the videos on other Websites.”
There is nothing new with this concept. Michael, there are niche sites which are already providing this functionality - and much more. Take a look at this video for example: http://www.ifood.tv/recipe/cho.....rawberries. The user can get recipe ingredients, directions. post comments, reviews, add to facebook etc, all from the embed code. Is YouTube leading the industry in innovation? Hell No!! Innovation in the market is done by the smaller players like http://www.ifood.tv, YouTube is just playing catchup now - a necessary evil of being a part of a big corporation
For those that may be having a problem with the URL, here (again) is the link to the video above: http://www.ifood.tv/recipe/cho.....rawberries
The dot (.) at the end of the URL is messing up the link.
@Technical Guy, it was a toss-up between you and Blake. But you just said video uploads, and the API is about much more than that. Blake had the more correct answer.
I feel for you, though.
The availability of feeds will make YouTube’s service much more powerful for everyone. This would allow even non-developers to really make the best of YouTube.
Why has nobody mentioned the ability to view higher quality video on YouTube already?
I haven’t seen much coverage surrounding it but there are recent videos on YouTube that offer the option to turn on a higher quality stream.
Tivo site says that it will only be supported on Series3 boxes - don’t most people have Series2 boxes?
As long as we are talking video platforms, people shouldn’t forget to check out Viddler. For some time, they have had an API, time tagged comments, tagging of specific moments, privacy options, higher definition, the ability to monetize your video your way etc, etc, etc. Theres a lot to like.
Thanks for the tip. I wrote up some ways in which the Embedded Media Field for Drupal can take advantage of the new API, with such features planned as allowing a commenter on a site with an embedded video to post a video in response from the embedding site, having it automatically be sent to YouTube through its API, and being embedded as content on the originating site.
la verdad es que esto esta creciendo demasiado rapido, a un ritmo muy acelerado youtube se es lo mas grande en videos del mundo, esta muy bueno.
can i have recon i am a captin grade two have all bodies and all shoulders 15 years old
../
how long