Fast Company article on Google+ “Hangout”
Amber Mac writes: While Google’s Hangout lacks the user base and buzzworthy status of other social services, such as Facebook, its community is growing steadily with a reported 100 million active users. Moreover, Google+ hangouts can be used in a number of ways to grow and enhance your business.
- Use Google+ hangout apps for collaboration
Google+ has recently released hangout apps. Two in particular can greatly enhance communications within your business. Slideshare, which allows users to create digital presentations, now has a hangout app so that you can easily share such a document while hosting a hangout. Cacoo, a service that makes creating diagrams a cinch, launched a hangout app to seamlessly present this document within the multi-person video chat.
- Create your own hangout “show”
With a web camera and a mic, you’re ready to broadcast. One limitation of hangouts is that users must be members of Google+, but once someone is signed up for the service the hangout experience is one of the best live video interactions on the web. (2.0 heads recommends Google+ for all SMBs.)
- Schedule free face-to-face hangout team meetings
Within my own small business, our six-person team is scattered in different parts of the country. We often rely on Google+ hangouts for meetings because it’s a free way that we can engage in a lively multi-person conversation. Aside from social media consulting, we also do online video production; a hangout is the perfect way for us to review a YouTube video we’ve created. While watching a YouTube video in a hangout, any of us can play or pause the video or choose another video to watch. Ever try something like this in Skype? No such luck.
Bradley Horowitz (who is responsible for the business unit at Google) has been quoted as saying that the optimal length of time for a Hangout is about 20 minutes. (That’s a 33% upgrade from the oft-quoted 15 minutes of fame you can expect according to Andy Warhol.) Make the most of it!
