TWX: AOL Launches Developer Program for AOL Video Search Engine

Continuing its commitment to provide developers with open access to its popular services, AOL announced today an initiative that opens the platform for its industry-leading AOL Video Search engine to third-party developers and video content owners. Through its new AOL Video Search developer program, AOL has made available a set of open video search APIs (application programming interfaces) as well as implemented a system for video content owners to submit feeds to the AOL Video Search index through new AOL Director Accounts.

"With more and more video content coming online each day, we believe video search will become increasingly important as a way for consumers to find all of the rich content on the Web - from high quality branded content to the most popular viral videos from across the web," said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President, AOL. "In an effort to help deliver the best results for the user, we are opening our platform and enabling developers to integrate video search results into their websites so that they can in turn offer their users easy access to the best search engine for finding video on the Web."

"The new AOL Video Search APIs offer developers an unprecedented set of tools and functionality for integrating our powerful video search technology into their websites," said Dr. Timothy Tuttle, Vice President, AOL Video. "We believe developers will find our video search APIs to be more versatile and easier to use than other video search APIs available today."

Through a set of open AOL® Video Search APIs, which are available in both REST and AJAX, developers can now build innovative video search-driven applications that access AOL's extensive index containing millions of videos from across the Web. Other functionality available through the new AOL Video Search APIs includes:

-- Advanced keyword searching as well as video browsing by category, channel, tag or user.

-- Advanced sorting and filtering capabilities for video search results.

-- Rich support for user ratings, tagging, favorites, etc.

-- Integrated support for easy user sharing on social networking sites, blogs, etc.

-- Full RSS support to enable easy syndication of video search results.

-- Easy self-service online sign-up.



For content owners looking to broaden the distribution of their video content, the AOL® Director Account program is a free, first-of-its-kind offering for site owners and content publishers to submit feeds to AOL Video Search. Unlike other video search engines, this fully self-service online sign-up and feed management system enables users to make their self-hosted videos easily searchable across the AOL Video Search network within minutes of being submitted. Through its network of third-party syndication partners and across the AOL websites, the AOL Video Search network has greater reach than any other video search engine, providing an ideal platform for content owners to syndicate their video and drive traffic to their own Web destinations.

For more information on AOL Video Search developer tools, access to the AOL Video Search APIs or to sign up for an AOL Director Account, please visit the AOL Video Search Developer Center at http://developer.searchvideo.com Also available at the AOL Video Search Developer Center is comprehensive online documentation as well as an application gallery showcasing mash-ups built on the AOL Video Search APIs.