YouTube as a Video Platform
Google's announcement of the launch of a set of API's to the YouTube platform are big news. In the announcement, YouTube describes itself as "an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device."
The new API's enable uploading of videos to YouTube, adding of metadata, retrieval of standard video feeds and of customized queries and software access to customize user functionality. In essence, YouTube is providing website publishers with all the necessary tools to manage and access video content hosted on the YouTube site. This is a big deal. By providing the infrastructure for free, they create a great incentive for publishers to post content to YouTube. As TechCrunch points out:
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.
This is a smart move by Google; YouTube becomes the de-facto home of all things video and positions YouTube to monetize all this video content.
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