Google I/O 101: Q&A on YouTube for Business

JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Hello, everyone.
My name is Jarek Wilkiwicz, and I'm here with JJ Behrens.
JJ BEHRENS: Hey, nice to see you.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Nice seeing you.
Long time, no see.
JJ BEHRENS: I think since lunch.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Exactly.
And today, we'll talk about YouTube for your Business,
which is a webinar that JJ recently published on YouTube.
So we have a couple of questions for you, JJ.
You ready?
JJ BEHRENS: I hope so.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: OK, so the first question is, I watched
this seminar.
It's very interesting, but I never knew what was
going to come next.
So you cover a lot of ground.
What triggered you to actually create a seminar that covers
so much ground in 15 minutes?
JJ BEHRENS: Well, considering you've given this talk like
umpteen billion times, trying to surprise
you is pretty hard.
I had this idea that I wanted to start with very
nontechnical examples and then migrate to
very technical examples.
And all along the way, I want to show you something, talk
about it, show you how I did it, and then give you a
take-home message.
And so that's really where it's at.
And I really kind of did want to surprise the user.
Because there's so many different ways
you could use YouTube.
I wanted to keep them guessing.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: That makes sense.
You definitely had me guessing.
So question about some of the content that you covered.
I really like the video "New Dork." It's timeless.
JJ BEHRENS: Yeah, I have to watch it daily.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Exactly.
I think it definitely put me in the right state of mind.
JJ BEHRENS: Absolutely.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: I didn't quite get the part when you
talked about how Grasshopper benefits from having published
a video on YouTube.
How do people know that hey, this is Grasshopper, or this
is the product that's being advertised?
All I see is an awesome artist and his backup singer equally,
if not more awesome.
And how do I actually make the connection with Grasshopper?
JJ BEHRENS: She was pretty awesome, wasn't she?
Yeah, Grasshopper--
well, it works a couple different ways.
So there's metadata for the video.
And so the metadata has a link to grasshopper.com.
And there's also basically ad placement in the video for
grasshopper.com.
And those two things together are basically a great way to
spread the message of grasshopper.com.
And the greatest thing about this is that
it goes viral, right?
I can't stop watching that video, because I love watching
that guy sing about random things and show pictures of
famous people in the background.
So it's like awesomely free advertising.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: So is the metadata.
Something that they have to pay for, or how does the user
actually encounter the link to grasshopper?
JJ BEHRENS: No, it's free.
And when you upload a video to YouTube, you can pick your own
description and so forth, and you can embed whatever you
want in the video, to some degree, of course.
We have rules, but--
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: So the URL to Grasshopper is basically in
the description, and that's what drives the referral
[INAUDIBLE].
JJ BEHRENS: Yeah, that's right.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Got it.
OK, great.
Another video that you showed is the
original skateboards video.
So I was wondering, how are you skateboarding skills?
JJ BEHRENS: Well, you can't see it, because
it's below the table.
But I have scars all over my body, which--

it's not pretty.
So definitely--
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Not so good?
JJ BEHRENS: Not so good.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: So what type of skateboard do you have or
are you planning to buy in the near future [INAUDIBLE]?
JJ BEHRENS: So I was a street skater.
I did a little bit of downhill as a kid, which results in
lots of long scars with heavy scarring flesh.
But yeah, I suck at skateboarding.
I was glad to finally discover programming, because I was
finally good at that.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Cool.
Maybe you should just watch that video instead.
JJ BEHRENS: I know.
That video makes me want to buy a skateboard.
I'll tell you that much.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Definitely.
Definitely.
So you talk about YouTube Direct and how this product,
open source project, it's great for soliciting
user-generated content.
So the question I have, since this is a talk about YouTube
for your Business , is suppose I'm not a developer.
How do I deploy it?
And then how much time would it take me?
Can you tell me a little more about what's involved in
actually getting it set up for business?
JJ BEHRENS: Yeah, so YouTube Direct is not the easiest
thing to set up.
I mean, if you go through the instructions, it walks you
through setting up Eclipse.
And as soon as you say Eclipse, you're going to lose
30% of developers out there.
But we have a session coming up at Google I/O that somehow
talks about this thing called YouTube Direct Light.
And I'm just guessing--
I don't know for certain, but I'm guessing that that Light
means something, and that it might be easier for people
going forward.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: So if you are a developer, what skills
do we need to have in order to get it all done?
What are all the major pieces that you need to be familiar
with in order to deploy it?
JJ BEHRENS: So to deploy YouTube direct, I mean, you
don't actually have to alter any source code.
You basically--
it's a Java application, and it uses Google App Engine.
And so you don't actually have to do any coding to set it up.
It was fairly hard to set up for people who weren't coders
at all, didn't know how to do things with clips and
installing the right applications.
I think it's going to get even easier in the future, and I
think we're going to get to a situation where you don't have
to be a developer at all.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: So I hear YouTube Direct
is written in Java.
JJ BEHRENS: Yep.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: So what do you think about that?
JJ BEHRENS: Well, you know, there's a lot of people who
really like Java.
That's what I think about that.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: That's a very diplomatic answer, JJ.
JJ BEHRENS: Thanks.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: What happened to you?
JJ BEHRENS: Well, you know, I--
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Is it late in the day, or you didn't have
your caffeine yet, or what's going on?
JJ BEHRENS: Well, I am a Python guy
and a Ruby guy, so--
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Yeah, I tried to get you going.
JJ BEHRENS: Jeez.
Are we going to go into Emacs versus vi as well?
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Maybe next time.
OK, good.
So sounds like it's really not that big of a deal, as long as
you have some skills and you know how
to use the App Engine.
JJ BEHRENS: That's right.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Cool.
So you talked about coffee table applications.
So my question is, are these applications spill-proof?
JJ BEHRENS: Well, that's a great question.
So I should first start off with explaining what a coffee
table application is.
So tablets are pretty popular these days, and 955 Dreams is
a company that has a few different applications,
including The History of Jazz and Band of the Day.
And these applications are just beautiful.
You just want to play with them.
It's like you pick it up, and you're like, I want to play
with this thing.
And so there's this idea that you just put these
applications on a tablet, and you leave them on your coffee
table, whereas in the past we used to have art books on your
coffee table.
And people will come over and visit, start playing with the
application.
And it's just a really neat experience.
Now, as to whether they're spill proof, you know, I think
you have an iPad.
We could try it out.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: How about we use your tablet?
JJ BEHRENS: Oh, well, you know.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: If I want to learn more about these types
of apps, where can I find more information?
JJ BEHRENS: I'm not actually sure.
I mean, I guess you could go check out 955 Dreams' Apps,
and just try them out.
That's the best I could say.
I mean, I really like Band of the Day.
I think that that's a really compelling app.
I asked him, how do you guys come up with
such beautiful apps?
And he says, well, we go completely
custom from day one.
They decide not to do native widgets.
They completely build their UI from scratch.
And he says, that's what we do to make
things extremely beautiful.
Band of the Day has this beautiful calendar with the
artwork for the artist in the background.
And I don't know, those guys have something I don't have.
Design skills.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: I think you're pretty stylish.
So you talk about OAuth2.
And I think--
again, this is a talk, talks about
YouTube for your business.
OAuth2 is something that sounds a little scary to an
average user.
Why not use username and passwords?
What's wrong with that?
Can you just ask people to type in their credentials and
be done with it?
This is how things have been done for many years, right?
So is it really necessary?
JJ BEHRENS: Yeah, so it turns out that client login, which
uses a username and password, has a bunch of different
failure modes.
And because of all those different failure modes, we've
actually deprecated it.
So the nice thing about OAuth2 is that it allows an
application to do things on your behalf without you
sharing your username and password.
So that makes it a lot more secure world.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Is it more difficult to program?
Say I'm a developer.
I want to use the YouTube API.
And I know a client login.
I know username and passwords.
What do I need to do to actually integrate OAuth?
JJ BEHRENS: So I think that there's a couple different
things that are helpful to do.
The first is that we have really good
documentation on this.
I'm always amazed at how good Andy is at writing our tech
docs for YouTube.
So he has this one-page thing that explains OAuth2.
I read that, and I didn't understand
anything before that.
And I read that, and it all made sense after that.
We also have an OpenID demo, which is very related and
shows you all the different steps.
And you walk through that, and it explains it.
And also, the client libraries tend to have samples of how to
do this stuff.
And so when I did my other webinar based on Ruby on
Rails, I actually took source code from the client library,
and it walked me through all the different parts.
And so yeah, there is some learning curve.
But it's worth it.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: So what does the Auth stand for in OAuth?
JJ BEHRENS: I could never tell if it's authentication or
authorization, but I think it's a little bit of both.
I think it's authorization.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: I think it stands for oh, man.
JJ BEHRENS: Oh man, yeah.
And the two.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: All right.
So you mentioned Google I/O, and this is where I'm going to
try to get you to leak stuff, because I know leaking is
something that you never do.
And I always want to get some more information.
So which feature from the features that we're going to
be launching at Google I/O for YouTube, which one gets you
most excited?
JJ BEHRENS: Well, jeez.
Are we talking about most excited in terms of ones that
I'm going to use, or most excited in terms of ones that
I'm afraid that other people in the company might not let
us talk about?
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Now you're getting too tricky, I think.
So which ones are you going to use?
JJ BEHRENS: Well, we have a talk where we're talking about
the new YouTube Direct Light.
And it talks about soliciting videos from your users.
And I've seen that talk, of course, in rehearsal, and I'm
super excited about this.
I think this is going to be a big deal.
In fact, I would have to say this is pure dead brilliant.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Thanks.
So for folks that have watched the YouTube for Your Business,
what are the next steps?
If I want to learn more, I want to use YouTube for my
business, if I want to advertise, if I want to build
application developers, where do I go to find more
information about all the different places?
JJ BEHRENS: Yeah, so there's a bunch of different directions
you could go.
This talk kind of straddles the middle, but once you start
in the middle, you have to walk in a certain direction.
So if you're a content owner, and you're doing your own
sitcoms or something like that, you probably want to go
to youtube.com/partner and become a content partner.
Now, if you're an application developer, you want to learn
more about using the YouTube API.
So you could go to youtube.com/dev.
Either way, there's going to be a lot of videos at Google
I/O, and you could watch all of those different videos.
And we're going to be having them online after I/O, just in
case you can't make it to I/O. And I think once you watch all
those different videos, you'll know where to go next.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Cool.
Thanks, JJ.
JJ BEHRENS: Oh, why thank you.
And I'm just so happy that the interns over there on the
couch stopped making funny faces.
I was going to crack up in the middle of the talk, but now
we're almost done.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Great.
I think this is all the questions
that we have received.
JJ BEHRENS: OK, thanks a lot, guys, for watching.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Thank you.
And for those of you that will see us at Google I/O, we
really appreciate your feedback.
And talk to you later.