Perfect Secretary's pitch for @Adbroad (and the Youtube API)
2010-01-29 08:40:28
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It made great sense to post it to the BrandFictionFactory.com website. I really like the work Conquent did building the site so naturally we wanted to make it a little kitschier than a simple "here's my YouTube video". Now, we could have mastered a second copy of the video and uploaded it to the server, but keeping it all on YouTube lets @PerfectSec keep track of how many people watch the video whether it's on YouTube or BrandFictionFactory.com and we don't have to worry about peak loads or any of the other headaches hosting your own streaming video causes.
So the team dug in and found out that Youtube actually has an API (Application Programming Interface). Turns out you can control just about everything that happens in a YouTube video with JavaScript.
All we really needed to do was dress up the video a little -- it's still YouTube, but we put a TV over the top of it. The problem with that is that the image of the TV covers up all the controls for Youtube, which means you couldn't play or pause the damn thing.
With a little magic from the YouTube API, we were able to create controls so all you have to do is click on the video to toggle play and pause (just like a regular YouTube video) and the real cool factor is that at the end of the video, we can swap out the video and put in a screen to direct people to go vote.
Pretty damn cool...