JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Hello, and welcome to "YouTube Developers
Live." We have an exciting show for you today.
Let me introduce our guests today, Tali Saar.
How you doing, Tally?
TALI SAAR: I'm doing good.
How are you?
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Doing good.
TALI SAAR: Thank you for having us.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Iddo Tal, how are you doing?
IDDO TAL: I'm great.
Thank you.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: And then on the Hangout,
we have Lior Gonnen.
Can you hear us Lior?
LIOR GONNEN: Yes.
Hi, guys.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: OK, great.
What time is it right now in Tel Aviv?
LIOR GONNEN: It's 8:20 PM.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: OK.
Well, thank you so much for staying late.
And I understand we'll talk about instant
messaging today, right?
IDDO TAL: Yes.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: OK, good.
So Iddo, tell us a little more about what is it that you guys
are trying to do?
IDDO TAL: Well, invi is the next generation of texting, So
it lets you share rich media clips.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: I see you're well prepared.
You have a deck with you.
IDDO TAL: Yeah.
We'll go through it.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: All right.
Show us what you've got.
IDDO TAL: So we believe it shouldn't look like that.
That's not a smartphone.
It should look like that.
The YouTube is embedded right within in the conversation.
Your click on it.
You can start watching it while chatting.
Flip through photo, share location.
Eventually our philosophy is that every app on the phone is
fully integrated into the communication tool of texting,
and that's the way texting should be, right?
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Mm-hmm.
IDDO TAL: And of course, all wrapped up in a beautiful
state of the art user experience.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: So is it fair to say you guys really
bring the rich media into the text messaging?
IDDO TAL: Yeah.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: So I think the text messaging is no
longer text messaging.
OK, great.
So I understand that we have a video that kind of shows the
basic overview of how the app works.
And let's see if we can roll it for our audience.
We have our excellent producer here nodding.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-[MUSIC PLAYING]
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: So why don't we switch to a live demo.
I know Tali was going to show us how the app works in
practice just to--
TALI SAAR: Sure.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: --make sure that it really works as
beautifully as it does in the video.
TALI SAAR: I am happy to.
So yeah.
So you just saw in the video part.
But let's run through it together.
So this is my invi.
You can see this is my inbox.
I have all my friends right here, and they all have these
cover photos, which makes it really easy for me to find the
right contact.
I can just see their face.
I don't even need to read their name.
So this is my conversation with Iddo, and let's see what
it looks like when we share rich media or
content from the web.
So this is, for example, a link.
It's an article from the web, so instead of getting this
blue link that you click, you open the browser.
You just get it embedded in the chat.
You get a snippet.
You get a nice preview of what the article is about, so it's
really embedded inside your chat as part of the texting
experience.
Now, this is YouTube.
Let's click on it.
So if somebody sends me a YouTube, this is what it looks
like inside my chat.
It's embedded, and if I click to play--
just a sec.
If I click to play, it actually plays inside my chat,
so I don't need to leave the app.
I don't need to go into a different viewing.
It's just everything really integrated inside chat.
Now, I can open my keyboard, and I can continue texting
while I'm watching the video.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Nice.
TALI SAAR: And eventually, if I want to share this video, I
can just hit Forward, forward it to Lior, and that's it.
It shows up inside my chat with Lior, and it's really,
really easy to share and communicate with your friends.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Great.
So speaking of Lior.
Hey, Lior, I was going to ask a few technical questions
about your app.
So can you tell us a little more about how the app is
implemented?
LIOR GONNEN: Sure.
So the app itself is written 100% in pure Android and Java.
We're actually using quite a few Google libraries.
Obviously, the Google YouTube native Player is the first.
Our entire protocol is running over Google protocol buffers,
running over HTTP to the server.
So Google protocol buffers is the next.
Where also you can REST API.
You can actually serve two videos from within the app.
You don't have to leave the YouTube app.
Obviously, you can share directly from there as well.
We're also using the Google phone number library.
and Jackson to parse JSON requests from YouTube.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Great.
So you're using the YouTube Android Player API to
implement the inline playback.
Is that correct?
LIOR GONNEN: Yes, it is correct, and we're are
actually one of the very first to use it.
We were on your beta program.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Right.
LIOR GONNEN: And we had fun being a part of it.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Cool.
Great.
LIOR GONNEN: It works beautifully from day one.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Great.
Well, I'm really happy to see a real product come out of
that engagement.
So very nice.
So we typically like to ask people on our show whether
there was anything that surprised you while you were
developing your application, anything-- whether there's a
technology or the usage, or the business, can you share
any insights with our audience?
LIOR GONNEN: Yeah.
So for example, one of the [INAUDIBLE]
that we had, first of all, users really
like our user interface.
And when we went out to the market onto Google Play,
people said, hey, guys, we really like your user
interface, but we still don't have any friends on invi, and
we really want to enjoy the beautiful
experience over texting.
So why don't you add SMS support?
So this was one thing that we didn't plan to do, but we did
it, because our users asked for it.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Great.
So the way the app works right now is, if I have an invi app
and I send a message to Lior, then the message is actually
going to go over IP and through your service, right?
If someone doesn't have it, I can still send a
regular SMS to them.
IDDO TAL: Exactly.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Cool.
And this is new in the version you just released?
IDDO TAL: Yeah.
Just two weeks ago.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: OK.
IDDO TAL: And actually, invi replaced the default texting
application in creating a rich media
experience also over SMS.
So our technology can take the SMS that you've got with a
link of YouTube, and actually it will not present the link.
Even though it's gone through an SMS, it presents the widget
that you can actually click and play it right while
continue SMSing or invi's.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Cool.
And then also you can also share to invi, right?
So really any piece of rich media that you guys support,
if I go through the standard Android sharing, it will be
sent to your app and then to whatever their CP and then
rendered in the rich media--
IDDO TAL: Yeah.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: -on the receiving side.
IDDO TAL: Exactly.
That's what the big one with our users.
So if you're on Flipboard, you're reading
an interesting article.
You say, oh, I have to send it to Lior.
So I can go from the Flipboard, click Share.
Invi is one of the options.
I click invi and Lior gets it.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: Cool.
Cool.
And then another question that we typically like to ask,
anything that you saw on the API that you wish we had but
we didn't, any kind of road map feedback for us?
LIOR GONNEN: Yeah.
I think I have for the YouTube native Player, which is great,
and we really love it, it's limited to being used inside
of an activity or a fragment.
And one thing that we'd like to do is to allow the user to
play YouTube while they're out of the act, while they're
doing something completely else on their phone or tablet.
So just show a floating window, it's something that we
were not able to do with the current API.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: I see.
Cool.
All right.
Well, let's switch to the moderator queue to see if we
have any questions from our audience.
Let's see.
I see one question that is relevant, and I think it's
addressed to me.
The question is whether YouTube Developer
Relations is hiring.
And yes, we are hiring.
You can learn more at developers.google.com/jobs.
In fact, the Google Developer Relations team is hiring.
So if you are not into YouTube, you can look at some
of the other opportunities that we have available.
Well, I think this concludes our show today.
Thank you very much for joining us.
And thank you, Lior, for staying up late in Tel Aviv.
And for those of you watching--
LIOR GONNEN: Thank you very much.
JAREK WILKIEWICZ: --we'll see you live again next week on
"YouTube Developers Live." Bye.
IDDO TAL: Bye.
Thank you.