Dailymotion shoots for video-powered apps, slowly opening up developer API

Dailymotion, the French-born video site and YouTube competitor, has quietly launched a public Application Programming Interface (API) for third-party apps that want to integrate some, if not all, of its features.

Available as an SDK for JavaScript, PHP and Objective C (iPhone, iPad and Mac), with ActionScript (Flash) and Python also under development, Dailymotion’s initial API offering, however, appears to be a work-in-progress. The company says that it will “eventually” support the full gamut of Dailymotion’s core functionality, including video upload, playlists, channels etc. offering the ability to integrate “Dailymotion modules” into any site or application, such as on iPhone, iPad, Android, Bada, and Windows Phone.

It’s interesting to see Dailymotion finally get around to offering a public API, something that Google-owned YouTube has had for yonks. There also seems to be a significant emphasis on mobile apps, which makes a lot of sense given the trend towards consuming content on the go and the advent of tablets but also now that a large share of Dailymotion is owned by Orange.

Last month the telco acquired roughly 49% of the company for approximately €59 million with an option to purchase the rest of Dailymotion at a later date. Although, as we pointed out at the time, the deal looked an awful lot like the French government selling a company to itself, with both Dailymotion and France Telecom-owned Orange in part backed by Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement (FSI), the French government’s sovereign wealth fund.