Hangouts: A potential gap in the market for Google+

Looking at a social media industry, each major player has established its own marketplace/niche. LinkedIn serves the job-hunters and professional audience, Twitter enables fast updates and RSS feeds and Facebook does all of it, but it excels at connecting people and companies at personal levels. Now here’s the problem with Google+. While in my opinion the site was very well designed, it tackled the same niche as Facebook did, with a very similar strategy and arguably without sufficient benefits to persuade masses of people and their friends to migrate to a new platform. After all, why should they? The Daily Mail has rightly called it a ‘virtual ghost town’ (quote), seeing a third of users post once and never again.

There is an escape road for Google+ though, and it’s called Hangouts.

What is Google+ Hangouts and why is it important?

Few days ago, I saw a Tedx video by Daria Musk, whereby a musician became well known by providing LIVE concerts through Google+ Hangouts. Notice the keyword. Live. In a new world where musicians such as Justin Bieber come into attention by recording themselves on YouTube, the possibility of real-time, interactive communication surely opens up plenty of new opportunities.                         

While the service itself is not new, G+ Hangouts is not very well known among general public and that’s why I am dedicating today’s article to this topic. Google+ Hangouts is an online group video conferencing tool able to accommodate up to 10 users in one space.  A lot of you will be asking a question:’ I have Skype, why would I want this?’. The answer is because it’s on the cloud, meaning, all you need is a browser and a Google+ account (and an initial plug-in, which Google is trying to remove). In May 2012, Google enhanced this function by releasing Hangouts on Air, which enables one to broadcast live sessions for anyone in a larger number, be it their friends or not, to watch.

Why is it important to Google+, though? Let’s look at three perspectives in which I could see Hangouts being of benefit: entertainment, online collaboration and brand image.

First, the entertainment perspective. Pine and Gilmore(1998) introduced the theory of Experience Economy, whereby the argument is that that consumers have shifted from purchasing services to seeking experiences, as they want to contribute their own effort and be a part of the experience. In simple terms, they seek real-time interaction. In recent years, there has been a trend of musicians to publish their content on YouTube for general audience to see. Following the Pine and Gilmore theory of Experience economy, why not to integrate it with YouTube live, let the audience be a part of the concert and allow them to interact with us a create the chemistry of the experience?  Another option that occurred to me is an introduction of paid live content (either one time or subscription), for instance big concerts or sporting events, which could add extra revenue to both Google and musicians. Although there might be issues regarding licensing as well as paid content not fitting the Google business model, it might be a thing to consider for the future, should Google choose to target living rooms of households.

Secondly, the online collaboration perspective. While there are several online video conferencing tools out there such as Cisco or Skype, few are able offer complete packages as Google, up to the point, where it could even simulate small-sized classrooms. The popularity of Gmail and the possibility of having customisable circles may offer both convenience and security that online collaboration would need. Hangouts could be used for various training or educational classes, whereas the geographical reach would be larger and the costs significantly lower than that of a physical class. 

And finally, the brand image perspective, through which companies can connect to their customers at a more personal level. For instance, Cadbury used Hangouts to connect to their fans with well-known people such as Olympic athletes, which helps them increase the loyalty to the brand. In addition to that, they may be able to replace the traditional customer service with a more interactive video-conferencing, which would bring the experience down to a personal level. Instead of dealing with the ever-annoying, inefficient call centres, we would be able to deal with our product problems in a face-to-face manner. 

The key potential of Google+ Hangouts, however, lies in the fact that the service is embedded in the browser and does not require a separate client for its use. While at the moment it is only possible on desktop clients, there should be no major obstacles in making it run on mobile devices as well. And I believe, with the combination of Circles and possibilities of Google+, Google Docs and YouTube, Google may potentially be building a powerful social media ecosystem.

 What is next for Google+?

Google jumped on the social media relatively late with arguably limited success. With the introduction of Hangouts and later Hangouts on Air, it may be looking at a right direction, gaining a certain competency over Facebook. However, again, consumers are simply not aware about these benefits or sometimes even that such tools exist. During my Masters degree, we have conducted a seminar session online through Hangouts, before which only two out of ten people only two knew it existed. Furthermore, why has Hangouts on Air only been made accessible to the general public a year after the launch, seeing major corporate clients had access to it earlier.

So what can Google do to increase its popularity?  In contrast to Facebook, Google+ is not Google’s core business and it can be seen by the lack of effort the management puts in it. According to the Understatement.com (2011), Eric Schmidt did not even have a Google+ account, while CEO Larry Page showed minimal use. Hence, I believe the first step should be to encourage its use within the company culture, since the culture is often the public identity of a company. Secondly, there is a need of more marketing effort to raise the awareness of Google+ benefits. For instance, a PR event, which would be streamed live through Google+ Hangout could build some excitement around the platform and attract more users. And finally, although Google has managed to attract numerous users, there needs to be more initiative to maintain a high level of activity.

I realize this article does make me sound like a Google fanboy, which I am not. I do, however think that Google is making the right steps in the development of their social media platform. Maybe they should have started this earlier, but that is not important. As much as Google gains revenue from advertising, they need to realize that more advertising is required for their own social network in order to gain long-term sustainability. Of course, there is a lot more that could be said about Hangouts and Google+, but that could make this article a lot longer than it is now. To conclude, it will be very interesting to see the development of Google+ and a potential Google ecosystem.