Google today announced that it will give web developers deep access to the underlying technology behind YouTube with a new YouTube API (application programming interface). Having gained substantial recognition and growth in the U.S. and worldwide, YouTube stands as the world’s most popular video sharing site. Up until today however, users who wanted to create videos had to upload a certain type of clip to YouTube and then using an embedded link on their own website to show the video.
Web developers will now be allowed to use many of YouTube’s technologies to build their own video uploading and sharing mechanism. Officials from YouTube said that anyone can now build a customized video sharing interface on any website, and upload directly to YouTube servers, without ever having to officially load the site. Going beyond interfaces, web developers will also be able to customize the Flash video player and control how videos are viewed.
The new API will also allow developers to create new mechanisms for sharing videos in the future. For example, an iPhone users would be able to capture video, and upload that video to a specific YouTube-enabled website. This is all definitely possible in the near future, thanks to the iPhone software development kit (SDK). iPhone users already have playback and search access to YouTube, so having creation and upload features is an inevitable.
YouTube said today that it will host all videos, provide the streaming mechanism, and make the new API available globally to all users.
