Google+ ups the social media chatting game
Simon Quance, head of Sixth Sense social media, part of the Equi=Media Group, on Google+: “The jury is out, and Google+’s success still hinges on whether users can be tempted away from their cosy Facebook homes”…
Early commentary surrounding the launch of Google+ has been reasonably favourable, and so far, this is Google’s most rounded approach to social media. It does a good job of pulling together the social technology that Google always had, or has recently launched.
While 10 million plus subscribers in its first few weeks was a very impressive start, it is still relatively early days , and until the platform is promoted more openly to the mainstream, it is hard to say what sort of pickup it is going to have with the general populous.
Regardless of usage figures, there are some features that Google+ is definitely doing better than Facebook – one of which is its video conferencing facility, casually named ‘Hangouts’.
Hangouts is a great, well implemented facility, which enables users to have video chats with up to ten people at once, have multiple concurrent calls and even allows users to share links and watch YouTube videos together.
To the mere moral social media user it may seem that this multi-tasking is a feat bordering on the impossible, but the breadth of capability is there and is significantly more than any other platform currently offers. What’s more, the service is free and readily available to all Google+ users at the click of the mouse.
And Facebook’s response? Those at the top have realised that it’s now time to focus on current users’ interaction methods, rather than just the incessant drive to garner new followers. After making several changes to the chat facility, including opening conversations up to multiple users, Facebook announced an allegiance with the online telecommunications leader, Skype.
The service currently has over 150 million active users and processes over 300 million minutes of video calls every month. Skype has been dominating the video chat market for a while. So far so good then, Facebook’s 750 million users can make calls for free to other Facebook users, without the added necessity of downloading and logging into Skype.
However, on paper, the Facebook/Skype service still does not appear to offer as much as Google+’s 10-person hangouts. Users will have a separate pop up box, where the call will appear to be accepted or declined, but crucially, can only hold one video call at a time. However, its ‘videomail’ service, allowing users to leave video messages when their call is not picked up, is a great feature not yet available on Google+.
The jury is out, and Google+’s success still hinges on whether users can be tempted away from their cosy Facebook homes. Great functionality like Hangouts will help their cause significantly, but it is safe to say the social media platform stakes have been raised and video calls are set to become the norm.
With such accessible and developed video conference facilities available already the service can only become more and more popular as the technology develops, and the platform could well be set to overtake traditional ‘chat’ in the not too distant future.