It's about time, YouTube announced that they are now supporting the ability to use deep links, to go directly to a specific second of a video. It's a bit surprising that it took Google so long to implement it, and more surprising that they needed their community to make them understand the need for that. Better late than never, and more importantly I always respect a company that listens to its users.
How to use deep link? well here is the YouTube team explanation: "To create a deep link, append the following to the end of a YouTube video URL: #t=1m15s. This says to link to the time 1:15 - you can replace the numbers before the 'm' and the 's' with anything you like.
As an additional bonus, if you mention a specific time in a video comment, e.g. "haha 1:14 is funny", this will become a hyperlink. Viewers can simply click on the time and the video will automatically jump to the point you are referencing. Pretty cool huh?"
The only thing that bothers me is why can't the video (the one a deep link sent me to 1:15 of the video) include in the embed code the option to embed it from the deep link second as well... It's a very tricky user experience question, as If I landed on a video with a deep link included, and I want to embed it in my blog also, should in this case the embed code already include the deep link? There might be a good reason why people sent me exactly to the deep link location of the video and not somewhere else. Unless you give the user both options in this case (in a simple way), its not an easy question.