YouTube Direct Allows Media Sites to Accept, Manage User-Gen Videos

Video sharing site YouTube early this morning announced a free API that enables media sites to moderate and post videos uploaded by visitors.

Early adopters of the new feature are NPR, Politico, The Huffington Post, the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. YouTube plans to offer the API to more media sites as well as any organizations that want to leverage community-submitted video content.

Here are some details of the announcement from YouTube’s Steve Grove on the YouTube Biz Blog:

Almost any event that takes place today has a chance of being captured on camera. As YouTube has become a global platform for sharing the news, media organizations have been looking for a good way to connect directly with citizen reporters on our site so they broadcast this footage and bring it to a larger audience.

That’s why we created YouTube Direct, a new tool that allows media organizations to request, review and rebroadcast YouTube clips directly from YouTube users. Built from our APIs, this open source application lets media organizations enable customized versions of YouTube’s upload platform on their own websites. Users can upload videos directly into this application, which also enables the hosting organization to easily review video submissions and select the best ones to broadcast on-air and on their websites.

Below is an explanatory animated video from YouTube. On the jump is an NPR video soliciting viewer-submitted science-related videos for a feature called The Wonderscope and some quotes (courtesy of Beet.TV).

Beet.TV’s article about YouTube Direct included some quotes from YouTube spokesperson Aaron Zamost:

“This benefits news organizations because it gets them more content to broadcast and include in their coverage, and it’s good for users who get editorial validation and a wider audience for their videos.”

and Mark Stencel, NPR’s Digital Media managing editor:

“We’ve been experimenting with new approaches to explanatory journalism through our multimedia offerings for some time and are ready to invite our audience to take part more fully. We see strong evidence that they want to engage based on their activity on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.”

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