Web video platform Brightcove has so many API partners just two months after the release of Brightcove 3 that it had to create an alliance to contain them all. Actually, the Brightcove Alliance is more of a marketing exercise to acknowledge and promote its API partners. Nevertheless, nearly 100 companies (including Yahoo, AOL, DoubleClick, Veoh, Metacafe, Slide, Meebo, Blinkx, Sprout, Clearspring, and Visible Measures) have implemented the API in less than two months. (Update: In other news which we noted in our Layoff Tracker, the company let go 25 people last week, or 15 percent of its workforce. Brightcove still employs 147 people).
When Brightcove 3 launched, it greatly expanded its set of APIs. As I wrote back then:
More APIs. Brightcove already has APIs that let developers customize its video player. Now it is opening that up to developers who want to write plug-ins for social commentary tools (JS-KIT did this), contextual advertising, or analytics. The company is also releasing syndication APIs for controlling the advertising for each video no matter where it appears. And its Brightcove Media APIs will make each video visible to search engines and make it easier to add related videos, and other contextual information. Each Brightcove video will now have its own unique URL. The Media API will allow publishers to exact programming information from the videos so they can insert it into the HTML of each page.
The new APIs cover everything from advertising and analytics to mobile, search, and social media. Video portals like Veoh and Metacafe, for instance, are using the APIs to play videos from Brightcove partners wrapped in players that look like their own, but extend the reporting and advertising afforded to the video owners through Brightcove. Similarly, Meebo now supports Brightcove videos in its IM environment, as do Sprout and Clearspring in their widgets. JS-KIT and Intense Debate are using the APIs to allow Brightcove video publishers to add commenting features to their videos. Advertising partners from DoubleClick to 24/7 Media can now plug their ads into Brightcove as well.
Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire likens the Alliance to App Exchange for Salesforce.com, where “customers can snap something in without doing any additional work. A partial list of partners is below, or you can explore more here. And here is an example of an API integrations in widget from DotSub, which offers subtitle translation for any Brightcove video:
