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Google Opens Up YouTube's APIs To Developers

YouTube decided that operating a destination site was no longer cool and beefed up its capabilities. It is now offering partners and developers a full-fledged platform to help them maintain their own brands with a new set of APIs and tools. These tools can be used to integrate YouTube into Web sites and allow for the creation of YouTube applications.

Apart from all the silliness of the vast bulk of user-generated content, YouTube is a boon for small and large Web publishers alike. It's a stable platform where videos can be hosted and shared for free, and it allows you, the publisher, to make a buck at the same time by monetizing your traffic. As useful as it is, it still exists as a domain on its own, and for sites that want or need to design better ways to share video on their own sites, YouTube is making it more possible.

The official YouTube Blog ran a post explaining everything. "Building upon our existing APIs for querying the YouTube library and playing embedded YouTube videos, we have added the following new API services for external developers and partners":

* 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.

What does all this mean? This new functionality allows any business to build a Web site and upload videos straight to YouTube. They can then retrieve video feeds, comments, responses, or playlists from YouTube.

"For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere, including the online destinations and Web communities they already love and visit regularly. For partners and developers, YouTube has grown into much more than a Web site," reads the blog entry. "It has become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party Web site, desktop application, or consumer device."

So, the question is, what are you going to do with all this new functionality? Have at it.

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