YouTube, the hugely popular internet video sharing website has at long last announced support for deep linking in its videos. You can now deep link to YouTube videos, i.e. you can now link direct to a particular spot in a YouTube video, so that someone clicking the link will be taken to the video at that exact spot. All you need to do is append a short tag to the end of the video URL. This handy enhancement is the latest and maybe a bit late entrant into the already rich repertoire of services that the Google-owned site offers to users.
Deep linking in Action
To deep link to the exact spot you want in a YouTube video, specify the spot by appending a tag to the end of the video link.
The tag has the syntax: “#t=AmBs” where ‘A’ stands for minutes and ‘B’ for seconds. The numbers before the A and B can be changed to edit the minutes and seconds, respectively.
Thus if I want to view a particular part of one of my favorite speeches (just kidding here, of course I want to see all of it, that’s why it’s a favorite you know!) I just add the following tag at the end of the URL: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc#t=10m45s
Typing this link in the address bar of a browser will take me directly to the 10m45s spot in the video. And if I see the above appended link on a webpage and chance to click on it the result will be the same.
Pretty handy, right?
It Even Works for Comments!
The feature works in a comment to a YouTube video too, in fact it’s easier. When posting a comment on a video you need to append just A:Y. You don’t need the video URL since you are already on the video page. Thus had the above time spot came in a comment it would have taken the form 10:45. Also this will become a hyperlink which viewers can simply click on and jump to the 10m45s spot. Quite cool an idea, you might think. But take care not to include any punctuation or anything except a space right after the Y, else it won’t work.
Embedding Deep Linked Videos
Deep linked YouTube videos can be embedded in blogs and other web pages without much trouble. WordPress, the blog publishing software has the Smart YouTube plugin which supports deep linking. The Youtube embed video code uses different syntax to start a video at desired time by using ‘&start=’ parameter accepting value in seconds. To illustrate, this code in your post using Smart Youtube starts the video at 50 second mark: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&start=50
The Latest a Bit Late?
Online opinion is that this latest feature from YouTube is a bit late to see the light of the day. It’s really a mystery as to why they took this much time in adding the deep linking arrow to their armoury. Google Video introduced the same feature over two years ago. Til now YouTube users had no other options but to rely on third party services like Splicd to do the deep linking. But with competitors like Hulu hot on their heels stealing viewers, it was always a question of when and not if for YouTube. A long overdue step maybe, anyways better late than never. YouTube is popular and for sure this is going to make it more popular. Let’s enjoy the show!
A very nice addition indeed! Thanks for letting us know about the addition of this feature to Youtube.
Yes this is a nice little update, however I think it might be a sign of how YouTube is becoming too big and has yet to address larger issues such as the comment overflow or thumbnail abuse.
“The latest a bit late” but I like it! I am also wondering why it took so long for YouTube to add this feature. As you said I had been using Splicd and found myself going away from YouTube too long and was also having some issues. Now that they have deeplinking, I can do as I like, and stay tuned into YouTube!
Yes Bianca this is a bit late. It’s pretty surprising that this functionality wasn’t available earlier, as Google Video introduced the same feature over two years ago. I find it not a big new feature but it’s certainly one that will come in handy. But kudos to to the feature -YouTube will also automatically detect when someone mentions a time in a video comment and add a hyperlink to that point in the video.
Dylan
The trick, if there is such a thing, is variety. Make certain you collect a steady and varied collection of links
Excellent I think this deep linking video clips for the correct content you want to give our visitors shouuld be of much use to webmasters. I will cetainnly be using this. Thanks to the knowledge given here.
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