March 12th, 2008
YouTube releases an exciting new API
This new API that YouTube just released is a huge deal. Have you ever wanted to create a site that would require a huge amount of bandwidth due to video uploads/downloads? Well, one use of this new API would technically let you fully integrate your site into YouTube, while making it appear that it’s completely independent — basically using YouTube as your back-end while having full control over the presentation.
Click here to watch a video from the YouTube guys.
If you were ambitious enough, nothing is stopping you from even creating a brand new and better YouTube — leveraging the current YouTube user-base and content. Since you can now do most things website currently does through the new API, there is some amazing potential for interesting projects.
One unique example of how this API can be used is the tight integration with Spore — a highly anticipated game from EA. You can now easily upload videos of game-play without ever using YouTube directly. Cool.
The other interesting piece of their announcement today is a fully skinable player that can be controlled by javascript. This means you can style the player exactly how you want it. Of course, there will still be the YouTube watermark on videos, but that’s a small price to pay. Here is a list of case studies from people who were invited to test the API before it was launched.
I am looking forward to using this new API myself, and am very interested to see what other developers come up with too. If you are interested in sharing your ideas, post them in the comments!
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
