oEmbed.com - Open Format for Embedding Media

Although the website is minimalistic to a fault, oEmbed is a handy tool. It allows users to embed media on a website through posts with direct links. It’s an open format which basically standardizes formats—video, picture, etc—bypassing the media’s API which means no parsing is necessary. So any link is turned into XML or JSON for easier embedding. Currently, Viddler, Pownce, Flickr, Qik and Revision3 are sites using oEmbed. Users can test it out for themselves using Viddler’s test form created specifically for that purpose. oEmbed makes accessing various formats much simpler. Users can simple post URLs to a site which in turn doesn’t have to go through the trouble of sorting through numerous different API’s.

“oEmbed is a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third party sites. The simple API allows a website to display embedded content (such as photos or videos) when a user posts a link to that resource, without having to parse the resource directly.”

oEmbed is interesting. It allows for easy media indexing and display without having to worry about types. You can easily combine media types as oEmbed essentially standardizes the data. It makes things easier for developers, thus making for richer experiences for the end user. There could be a lot of different opportunities here.

How well does this work? What’s the business model?