YouTube just launched their 'director' program, which kills two birds with one stone. It eliminates the recently imposed 10-minute limit on videos and it also adds much better branding to your videos (one of the few things that Google Video did better). The 10-minute limit is an arbitrary limit meant to discourage the posting of copyrighted TV programs and movies. Although YouTube built part of its popularity on the availability of such content, they are trying to make nice with the TV studios and even boldly suggesting that the TV studios post content themselves.

The intent of the director program is fairly clear: make people jump through a couple extra hoops so that they feel more accountable for the content they post. In exchange, make the people feel 'cooler' by giving them a 'Director' title and providing better branding. You apply for the Director program, so presumably they at least screen the contents of the accounts they approve. It only took me a day to get approved and none of my videos are high-quality, so I think just about anyone who doesn't break the rules will get approved.

The improved branding is important. YouTube used to make it really difficult to link to your own Web site from a video, which annoyed me when I was posting MythBusters Q&A videos and couldn't even link to my blog post about the event. Now if you go to one of my videos, you can see there's even a kwc.org logo, a big red directory stamp, and a link to my blog post. You also get to specify custom "Director Details" fields with a particular video: Video URL, Custom Field #1, #2, and #3. As an example of a custom field, they mention 'price,' which presumably you would use if you were selling the full video elsewhere. The custom fields appear in the same upper right box as your director logo.