YouTube videos: Linking people to a specific point in it instead of the beginning

Ever wished you could link people to a specific point in a YouTube video, perhaps in an email or FB post?  Now you can! See this in action in the video below where you'll jump past the 15-second intro right to the first section called "Milo on The Power of Stories."

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6GNjl1VCHo

How did I do it? First, you need to know that there are two formats for YouTube video URLs and it's easy to tell which yours is.

·        If I have the shorter link style (the one with "youtu.be" in it) and I want to start the video 2 min 32 sec in, I'd add at the end: ?t=2m32s

·        For the longer "www.youtube.com" style link, to start the video 1 min 52 sec in,

I'd add at the end: &t=1m52s

Almost the same; it's just &" instead of "?" on the longer one. 

So, for example, on my long-named YouTube video above

I added the extra eight characters, setting the link to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6GNjl1VCHo&t=0m15s

Likewise, on my short-named YouTube video

I can take you 36 seconds in — past the part where we'd gotten about 20 audience suggestions for the improvised song and the singing starts just a few seconds later:

https://youtu.be/ZSGQ1vtTSx0?t=0m36s

Easy, and a great way not to have to explain what part of a video you want the recipient to look at when sending an email or posting on Facebook!

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Milo Shapiro, motivational speaker public speaking coach