You’re probably already familiar with Digg Spy, an online real-time view of activity on Digg.com. Now comes TubeSpy, which does the same for YouTube videos. This latest addition to Ajaxonomy Labs is a web-based visual tool that makes use of the YouTube API to let you see what people are watching on YouTube right now.
On YouTube’s homepage, there is a widget that shows “Videos being watched right now,” but as a simple widget, all you can do is hover over the videos displayed to see their title or click on a thumbnail to watch the video.
With TubeSpy, that homepage widget is now a web-based application. The app was built with jQuery, a JavaScript framework, the jQuery UI library for the tab controls, and the new YouTube API. So far, the app has been tested and works in IE7, IE7, and Firefox 2.
Using TubeSpy, you can view what videos others are watching as they stream by on the left-hand side of the page. You can pause this stream as desired if you want to stop and watch a video. Next to each video in the real-time stream is a “plus” sign, which lets you save the video to a “Recently Saved” list on the right. You can also click a blue arrow to just play the video directly from the stream itself.
TubeSpy
The video is launched on the same page you’re viewing where you can easily interact with it, just as you could with any embedded videos on other web sites. To the right, you’ll see “Related Videos,” which are the same videos you would have seen had you watched the video on the YouTube site instead.
You can also change to the tab “Last 15,” which shows the most recent 15 videos watched on YouTube, also in real time. (Apparently the 3-year old summarizing Star Wars is still pretty popular).
TubeSpy is definitely a cool app worth a look and an interesting use for the YouTube API.
