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A great use for G+ Hangouts

5 points by simonhamp ↗ HN
When Google+ finally goes public, one thing I hope stays is the Hangouts. It would be awesome too if even people who don't have (and probably don't want) a Google+ account can be involved in them.

I'm sure the smart folk over at Googleville are working on ways to make this happen and I for one am eagerly looking forward to it for one reason alone:

It will be the first mass-market way to have a face-to-face conversation with anyone in the world.

If you make video calling as easy as email, everyone will be at it!

What does this mean? Well the expected increase in social activity through this online social network is a given. But I have higher hopes.

I think this would be a great way to communicate with our customers! I envisage a time when we can see when a person is visiting our website and we can invite them to chat face-to-face.

No platform currently has the power to enable this because they are locked in to having registered users and installed applications - two big buy-in steps that put most users off!

But if Google can implement this right, we could see the next generation of ecommerce exploding in front of our faces.

7 comments

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auganov
"I envisage a time when we can see when a person is visiting our website and we can invite them to chat face-to-face."

Sure, go ahead, invite them and see them run away :-). The thing with video chat is people simply don't want to use it, at least not a lot. Many have been pushing different forms of video chatting for so many years already. It's really not about the technology behind it, people just don't like it that much.

Sure, Hangouts are great. I think that's the best implementation of a video chat I have ever seen. Might even want to try it out. But I definitely won't be using it on a daily basis. And customer support using web cams would be a nightmare. In 5-10-15 year perhaps people will perhaps change the way they want to overact over the internet, but for now most like to hide behind their text.

So it's all nice, but 'the next generation of ecommerce' as a result of a great video chat technology? I guess you're pushing it. Big time.

Google Hangouts might be the first serious step to going beyond text-based communication. But most likely it will be the ideas made on top or around it that will bring about a real change. I think what Hangouts can do is make people actually like video chat a little.

simonhamp
I guess only time will tell. Ultimately it's up to the consumer. But this is the first time that anyone could offer it to their customers for free without getting them to jump through hoops.
bricestacey
Hangouts still requires you install software.
simonhamp
Ok one little plugin... Not really a hoop. Doesn't it come bundled in chrome?
simonk
It will be bundled in Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.
bricestacey
I think my point stands until it is bundled in all browsers or it doesn't require an additional plugin.

Have you ever had to be sure a colleague's computer had WebEx installed before a conference call? Or planned to Skype someone but had to wait while you updated to the latest version?

Until it's bundled with your browser, these issues will constantly deter users. It's different for social. My mom will be patient if I'm 5 minutes late for our Sunday morning video chat, but it's hardly a hoop-jumping-free process.

We'll get there, but we're not there yet.

LarryA
Yeah I looked, and they even have versions for Windows Mac and Linux. Once they add in mobile support they have it pretty well covered for all platforms. I don't think facebook/skype has the same support level.