Is Google's Hangouts Its Killer App?
Last night a chatroom changed my life. — But it wasn't just any chatroom. It was a virtual “hangout,” the group video chat service that is a prominent feature of Google+, Google's new social-networking service that aims to challenge Facebook..
Context & Ripple Effects
Google+ entered beta on July 5 with mainly positive early reaction to its design and features, positioning Google in direct competition with Facebook. Google is also testing Google+ integration for Apps domains, putting distribution beyond the initial consumer rollout on the agenda.
Hangouts gives that challenge a concrete interaction model: live group conversation rather than only asynchronous social updates. Its importance is therefore less the feature itself than whether it gives Google+ a reason for users to gather there.
First-order effects
- Google+ gains a distinctive group-video feature that can make participation in Google’s new network more immediate for its early users.
- Facebook faces a new Google social offering framed around live, multi-person interaction as well as profiles and updates.
Second-order effects
- Google’s Apps-domain integration test makes the appeal of Google+ relevant to organizations evaluating whether a social network can support group communication, not just individual sharing.
- Facebook’s competitive response will be judged against whether its own social experience offers comparably compelling ways for groups to interact in real time.
Third-order effects
- If live group communication becomes a durable reason to join a network, social platforms will compete less solely on audience scale and more on the utility of the interactions they host.
- Google’s effort points toward social products becoming a distribution layer for communication tools, with consumer and organizational adoption increasingly linked.
The trend: Social-network competition is expanding from feeds and profiles toward services that make real-time group interaction a core reason to participate.