YouTube is opening up even more to the online community with a suite of APIs (application programming interfaces) that will allow websites, mobile devices, and more powerfully integrate YouTube content and capabilities.

Here are more details from Christine at the YouTube developer blog

Here is the YouTube announcement

For some time websites have been able to embed YouTube videos using a standard player, but
from YouTube’s Press release this morning we learn that they have added added the following new API services for external developers:

*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

The new interfaces that will spring from this effort will allow sites to customize players with the site theme to play YouTube videos as well as have the visitors interact with the videos in more interesting and site-specific ways.

This is an excellent move for YouTube as it will consolidate their dominance in this space as well as create more video uploading and viewing activity for YouTube. Users and websites should benefit as well from the ease of use and greater distribution. However despite the fact that millions of video clips are viewed daily at YouTube, monetizing that traffic and content has been a serious challenge for Google and it remains to be seen if the YouTube aquisition of last year will have direct and positive cash flow benefits for Google.