The State of Google Plus Hangouts - The Second Annual virtual bloggers Conference

Hey there, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to session 8 of the second annual Virtual Bloggers Conference. And we're having a lot of fun today and we've got David Ammerland back with us after just doing session 7 with us, so it's nice to see him here. How you doing, David?

I'm doing great and I have no idea how you do it because it's always so draining when you take part in one or two, one after another, and you've been doing enough for two days almost, so Yeah, I have 3 more after this and then I can take a little break and then just zonk out for a while.

But you know, it's fun, it's exciting, I'm learning a lot as we go too and I always ask my questions because I've got them and one of the reasons I did do this was so I can learn more. I'm on overload though, I've been learning so much. Yes, oh, that's great. And then we have the Hangout master himself, Ronnie Binzer is here and it's great to see you as always, my friend.

It is my pleasure. You're number 2 doing these with you, Chef Dennis, and I'll give a big tip to you because I know you— I do it myself many times, going back and watching my own shows that I've done helps me learn a little bit more because I'm focused on learning only rather than learning and running the show.

It's hard. You know, the good thing about this is you can go back instead of taking notes because you've got a video recording of it. Have you heard any more— before we move on to it, yesterday we had a podcasting session and they were talking about video podcasts becoming the new big thing. And I said, "Isn't that what this is?" And they answered, "Well, yeah, you just have to put a polished beginning and a polished end on it.

And iTunes is really hungry for video podcasts." You know, I probably need to go watch that session. I didn't see that one. But so the idea of what we're doing is video podcasting, I would say generically, or what's the right word? The concept of what we're doing is definitely video podcasting. It's just whether that particular— is it iTunes? That's— Yeah, it's iTunes. Okay. So maybe they're bringing in more or trying to focus more on what we're actually creating when we do these. Thanks.

Yeah.

So the idea, though, to add a bumper at the beginning, maybe even the middle, and at the end, I think is pretty common with the podcasting world. So that would be meaning adding a little bit of editing work, probably, to what you're doing when you do your Hangouts. And just to throw in another guess, because I'm not a podcast expert by any means, but you might want to change the length. Because I think the length of what we do with Hangouts on air tend to be a little bit longer than many podcast durations, I think.

Yeah, I think some of our longer shows would definitely not be a prime market for them, but the half-hour format that a lot of people are turning to would work out pretty good.

But you need that half hour to allow your bumpers too. Yeah, right. Maybe make it a 20-minute or a—

you know, Ryan Hanley is a real big podcaster, and he's really grown exponentially since he started doing Hangouts. And he said that people get invested in what you're saying and they come to listen to you. So if it's an hour and it's good content that you're sharing, they'll just pause you and come back to it. Okay, that's a thought anyway. Well, we're here to talk about Hangouts, but I just thought I would bring that up because that seemed very interesting and something the Hangout Helper would be interested in. We're here to talk today about how we use Hangouts, the great features of Hangouts, one being that they're evergreen, and what we can do with them to really make our presence known more on Google+ and on search and everything. We have two of the best Hangout advocates that I can think of right here. David, you just completed your new book and it was The Hangouts for Business. And Ronnie was your technical advisor. So if you want to start by talking a little bit about that and what you did, that might be a good way for us to get started.

Definitely. Thank you. And yes, Ronnie was the critical eye behind all the technical stuff. And a lot of people think that when you're writing a book, you know absolutely everything. And I can't tell you how much technical stuff I didn't know and still don't know in many ways. And I was really grateful for having Ronnie's almost encyclopedic knowledge of this, which constantly keeps changing. And we need to bear this in mind. Anybody who doesn't follow Ronnie Binzer on Google+ is definitely behind the curve on Hangouts On Air technology. So the only way to stay current is just to follow the guy. He puts out an incredible amount of content almost on a daily basis, right? Sometimes several times a day. And it's always useful, always valuable. So on that note— Let's paint the bigger picture. Hangouts, what are they? How are they used? What their impact is? And essentially, very rarely do we get to see a disruptive technology in its full developmental arc. And this is exactly what Hangouts are. They were introduced from the beginning in Google+ very quietly, a way of connecting visually with people across the web. There was no guidelines on how to do it. Here's the technology, just go in. Connect. And as people, we always are very quick to find the new level of connectivity and then slowly integrate it into both our working and personal lives. And this is exactly what we've done with Hangouts and Hangouts on Air. From a business point of view, and even from a personal point of view, it's the easiest, most powerful way to brand yourself, get your audience to know who you are, and create lasting relationships with the people you actually connect with. And this can't be stressed enough because you can do it certainly through other channels, you can do it through content perhaps, you can do it through email lists and all the other things, but those things are still a little bit impersonal and certainly in order to overcome that you need to put in a lot more effort, a lot more time and work a lot harder. Then you come into the visual element and if we take into account that 65% of any kind of communication is non-verbal. So although we use a lot of words and we semantically— we basically try hard to communicate in a way that doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room for interpretation, in a Hangout environment, it is so semantically rich. We get to hear the voice of somebody, the inflections, the way the facial expressions are, the hand gestures, the body language to a great extent. And we have a great affinity for that kind of thing. We create a snap judgment very quickly. And this is how relationships are formed. Incredibly fast. And the benefit of this, of course, goes beyond that, because the moment we have that kind of connection, then you actually get real value. If you are a brand and you want to communicate your brand values to somebody, this is the easiest way to do it. If you're a person and you want to connect with somebody and actually get to ask questions, have them ask questions back, give answers, and get into a real interactive engagement of a dialogue, it can't happen in any other way. This is absolutely fantastic, and the beauty of it is that the dialogue can continue for a long time afterwards through the event page. When people get there, they see the Hangout, they put a question and they ping you. You can go back and actually answer, and answer asynchronously, but it still keeps on adding value and continues to add value to that. So it's a very powerful technology to use, and we have seen it now disrupt quite a lot in terms of the advertising industry. You know, having been in Hangouts and having interacted with people on a real-time basis and actually get the real answers, you know, no glib questions and glib answers to this, we then become very wary of anything which smacks of advertising because we know it's spin. So really it trains us to filter out anything which is not very real anymore, and this is exactly what the relationship economy is all about. And that's the generic direction to which we're going. And basically when I wrote the book, I focused on those elements because They are the ones which are key to it. The technology and its capabilities are going to be constantly evolving and refined, but the basic dynamics which we need to keep in mind when we enter into this environment are going to be the same. And that was my guiding principle. I did have a lot of technical stuff which I put in there, and like I said, without Ronny, I would have probably gone wrong in a few directions, and I was very grateful to have him keeping an eye on that.

I think we're all very grateful for Ronnie. I know I am particularly grateful for him. And I do miss our early morning sessions when I was working, and I would drive into work and I'd be there at 5 AM, and Ronnie would still be on, and we would chat for a bit every now and then.

Ronnie's always on.

I had not gone to sleep yet.

He doesn't sleep, he lies.

And now I sleep until usually 8 o'clock every morning, so I'm not even up that early anymore.

Let's talk about Hangouts for just a second in the sense of how it's changed the way we communicate, because I think that's one of the big deals that makes the difference here with this tool versus maybe other video conferencing things. Some people ask me, what's the difference? Why do I want to deal with Hangouts versus Skype or something like that? And one of the easiest answers that I give is the fact that Hangouts is right in the middle of a social environment, and that's what makes this different. And so just piggybacking right on what David had just said, this is a phenomenal tool for building relationships. I frequently discuss it's the magical way to communicate your message, and it is. It allows you to communicate your message in incredibly valuable ways. But what happens, as David just set this up, is you build a relationship. So if the brand is communicating through a Hangout on Air broadcast, the people watching get to see the face of the brand. They get to see the people, some of the people there, and indirectly they're starting to build a relationship. And then the real magic part comes in is later on you might actually be able to be in a one-on-one or a small group community discussion visually— it's called a Hangout— with some of the people that work at that company. So now you not only watch the commercial, in essence, of them talking about what they do and who they are and what they believe in, but you actually might meet them. And instead of having to get in a plane and fly and get into a taxi and get to the hotel, etc., etc., you push a couple buttons and now you can actually communicate and meet them face-to-face. And this technology is something that we all dreamed of, but it's here, and it's been here for almost 3 years.

Yep.

I know, and it keeps getting better and better. And that being said, let me put a few questions up here real quick and we can engage a little with some people that have asked questions. And Michael Ribella is saying, HOA, a fantastic neuroeducational tool, David Amerland.

Absolutely. And the reason for that is that essentially we are hardwired to communicate on many different levels. And key to that historically and evolutionarily has been our survival. So a large part of our brain is given to this, and we do it instinctively and automatically. And it feels quite artificial when we do it through constrained channels. And by constrained channels, we have perhaps blog posts, articles, magazine advertising, TV advertising, or anything like that. We get into an environment like this, and it is free-flowing. People can interject, questions can arise, we can get off the tangents, and within that plurality We actually read a lot between the spaces of the conversation. So for instance, we can perfectly well script something as in a question and answer session between me and Ronny, and the moment somebody interjects something, that's it, we go off on a tangent. And basically by judging the finesse of the quality between the scripted and the free-flowing version, you can reach very quickly a conclusion on what is natural, what isn't, and who's a real expert. So it's really hard to fake anything in this kind of environment, which is why it generates as much trust as it does and why it creates the kind of neurological change in us in terms of how communication is formed, relationships are formed, and branding in a wider sense actually occurs.

So I just learned something from you, David, I always do, this is wonderful, and what I think you just said is the more, and I'm going to rephrase it in —my terminology—the more interactive we can make these Hangouts On Air, the more trustworthy we can be. Yes, exactly.

Yes.

So the very fact that we can bring a question from someone like Mick Sharp saying, "Great question, Lori," be wonderful, and we can try to address that question. But the very fact that we can bring that in temporarily, talk about it, and address it allows us to be known as those that can handle those questions live versus those that can only deal with the preset scripted thing, and therefore that gives that trust. Exactly.

And this is exactly one of the primary reasons I come across when large corporates mention when it comes to why they are adverse to Hangouts on Air. And, you know, I'm paraphrasing here, but it always boils down to the same thing. They say, well, they can ask us anything. And my immediate response to that is, well, what's wrong with that? Because at the end of the day, if you haven't got a very clear idea of your expertise and what you do and how you do it and how you communicate that, then if you're afraid of that question, you shouldn't be there doing that kind of work.

You should never be afraid of that type of transparency. Well, exactly. Yeah.

And sometimes you have to say, I don't know. Absolutely. I think that's probably where the corporate world has a little bit harder time than someone who's a smaller guy.

Well, yeah, I think they have a hard time with the humane, or rather human impact of things like, I don't know and I'm sorry. And you know, they see them as a defeat of some kind and a catastrophe of sorts, and it's nothing of the sort. It's basically a reaffirmation of human values. It's impossible for anybody to know absolutely everything. It's impossible for anybody to be completely infallible, it just doesn't happen. And I think it takes a certain kind of bravery to acknowledge that and say, hey, I'm human too and I'm learning all the time and my humanity is evident in this and where you're going to see my professionalism is that I'm learning from my mistakes and getting better. I think we are learning to value that, which means that we're reascribing value to the interaction. In the past, we wanted the big corporation that was absolutely robotic and never made any kind of mistakes or did anything wrong. And we know that now that is a fiction. And it led us down a path where we were basically lied to in many ways. We're relearning how to interact. And the world is changing because of that.

Excellent. All right, here's a question from Laurie Lazur. And she wants to know, as a company or brand, should you do the majority of your promotion of the Hangout from the Hangout page? YouTube post, or your own website?

Mm, that's a tricky one. I'm gonna give you my— I don't know, but I'll give you some ideas, and then let's see what David has to say as well. I would say it depends on where— it's one of those almost an SEO answer— it depends. It's based on where are people wanting to view your content. So if the majority of your people are liking your website then I would put it on your website. If you are trying to reach them because they already know about you, have it there. But in the place where discovery— new people are coming in— it may not serve you as well to have it on your website. It may be better to have it in an environment where it's freer or easier for people to gain access to, and that might be YouTube. Or if you've built up a good following in Google+, it might be Google+. What I have found, because I, I really push the technology and I— that's my product in essence— is my training on how to use this technology. I spend a lot of my time doing work in Google+ because those that are needing to know the tool as well as they need to, to do it, are going to need to be part of Google+. So that's a valid environment for me, but it may not be an environment for someone else. I, however, have found the most interaction, which brings back to our prior point, which allows the trust to be built possibly to the highest and quickest level happens for me on Google+. And so I do it in this environment in a Hangout On Air event because it allows, just like we're doing right now, probably the majority of this activity, Chef Dennis, that you're going to be getting because we're talking so much about Google+ in your series here, is going to be done inside the Google+ environment. Less so than maybe on your website, but that doesn't mean that's the best and only option for everyone. David, what do you think?

Well, funnily enough, I think you covered it, but I'll quantify it a little bit because you're absolutely right. Now, the easy answer to this is that essentially you always do it where your comfort zone lies and you're going to get the greatest conversion. Now, when I say that, most people think, okay, it's my website because it's my property, I feel really at home there, and that's where my calls to action are. But really, for a call to action to happen, you need to have trust. And for trust to be built up, you need to go through a process which allows somebody to get to know you, understand your values, and go from there. So really, Google+ is unparalleled in terms of that. So we need to do a little bit of perhaps trust sculpting, if we can call it that, where those who find, let's say, a Hangout On Air embedded on your website are then directed to similar events or the event page of the same Hangout On Air on Google+ in order to experience who you are, what you do, the power of your brand, your voice and style and kind of interaction. And that allows them then to quantify it in their heads. And those of course who know you like to follow you anyway, but for new people it's the easiest way to get to know you, and the moment they know you the relationship begins to become established, and that will lead to conversions. So you use normally, as Ronnie has suggested, you pay your website and the YouTube property as a driver to get people to where you want them to, and then you use your event page and live Hangouts and the Hangouts you're going to do in the future as the main conversion point because that's where you make the connection, that's where you build the relationships, and the moment you have a relationship, you have trust, people understand you, and that drives your business forward.

Now I have a little bit of a struggle with some of the people that I deal with regularly saying that I am, you know, they politely say it, but I'm wrong in the idea that the event tool for Hangouts On Air is not where most people watch. And I did, I said, well, everyone that I'm working with do, and it could be because I encourage them to, and that could be my own bias being coming out there. So I did a little bit of a poll within my Hangout Mastery group and 99% of the people say they watch them on the event page. So it is based on what I expected, but other people are saying no, most people are watching this on YouTube. And so I think it depends on your audience and who you are and how they know you as to where they're going to be watching these things. But it doesn't mean you don't want to try to encourage activity in other places than maybe your primary place.

Well, that's why you start off from your comfort zone. But I think the most comfortable environment for most people who do Hangouts On Air to interact with is Google+ because, well, we do it anyway, so we know its different methods and methodology. But also it allows us in terms of flexibility of effort, the comment section on the events page, plus mentioning other people, putting links to other resources. It's very easy to do., and that becomes a very rich environment in terms of the engagement and the interaction, and that's what actually leads to further depth in the relationship and perhaps greater conversions. The one thing which perhaps we should bear in mind is that not everybody is on Google+, so they are a little bit reticent to be drawn in into something new which they know nothing about in terms of engagement, etc. Just so they can get to know you. So really, when the standalone videos have to be really convincing, and then if possible, especially on your website, you need to really reassure them of the benefits of actually doing so. And that, again, is extra work that needs to be done. So we need to bear in mind the mindset of people who are not familiar with Google+. There's that initial resistance barrier, and there's the great fear of the unknown because they're coming into an environment which they don't know, they don't understand, they don't know how to work., and they will feel a little bit lost. So when it's on your website, extra effort needs to be done to bring them in, unless of course the video is so convincing that, you know, they just go and make a purchase anyway, in which case, you know, we don't need to discuss it any further.

Okay, now we have another question here from Lori, and she wants to know, most people are doing 1-hour Hangouts. Based on research of video, people like shorter 5-minute videos. Do you think more Hangouts should be shorter bite-sized learning?

Ooh, I can tackle that, and then I can bring Ronnie in because he's brilliant at this. Now, I thought at length about this, and a 1-hour-long Hangout, to some extent, is a little bit self-indulgent simply because we can. We love the interaction. It's addictive. We sit here. We discuss things. We make jokes. We have a lot of padding. It's not very scripted, so we don't have a hard guideline. And also, we flow with it. By the same token, we actually learn more about the identity of the people who are engaged in the Hangout, more about their style, their knowledge, their expertise, precisely because it is so unforced and unscripted. So a longer Hangout certainly has real value in terms of the content it releases and the insights it brings to the conversation. From a consumer point of view, the commitment towards an hour-long Hangout is huge, and I know from personal experience, the moment I see something over 30 minutes, I have to bookmark it to come back to at some point in the future, and sometimes I don't even know when, which means I've got a waiting list of videos to be watched. So really, and Ronnie has talked about this in the past, Scott Scowcroft is also another person who does this, essentially you take a Hangout which is an hour long and you can chunk it, so basically you can pull out a 2 to 3 minute section or even a 10 minute section which addresses a particular question, and that allows you to repeat repurpose the Hangout and actually give it greater impact, greater length of life, make it more pertinent, more relevant, and help it address very specific questions. So rather than forcing or having somebody go through an hour-long session in order to perhaps satisfy their curiosity about 2 or 3 questions, you can give it to them separately. It means more work from the point of view of the Hangout producer, but certainly in terms of the returns it has on that, the benefits are huge.

Right, so to chime in a little on that, the idea is this Hangout tool not only is a live interactive place, but it's also a content creation tool. So if we use the Hangouts, whether they're long or short, as a way to create content, and then we slice that content into smaller, more digestible pieces— and by the way, the 5-minute thing, I don't know if it's even 5 minutes. In the past, it used to be a 3-minute window. It was sort of a— The sweet spot. The key is though, the longer form is growing, but just like David's saying, I think it's growing for those that have now decided they're willing and able to invest time in you because they trust you. So these initial shorter segments that you might pull out of a longer Hangout can be used as a tease or a trust-building tool to get people to come to the point where they get to know you, and then they will watch your longer Hangouts. And again, David, I learned some more. I love being in Hangouts with you because of the very fact that we're learning from each other frequently. And this idea of the solidification of this relationship because it's a longer Hangout is something that I just had never thought, but it's just an obvious no-brainer once you get to the point where you realize, oh yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, I can pull this comment up real quick from Michael Riebel. What else to say to someone when you sleep yourself on a G+ pillow, David Amon?

Well, a bit more sleep perhaps would be great.

I forgot to use the pillow, actually. So— Yes. Okay, here's a question from Wayne Nix, and I'm gonna see if I can get this right. He wants to know what your opinion on the new ad placement bar in beta for Google HOAs is. He feels it takes away from engagement, and what are you saying? He also quantified—

Clarified that about focusing on the Promotions app. It's a brand new thing that's not quite public yet. It's in the HOA field testing mode. So David, do you want to answer on that, or do you— go for it.

Yeah, let's very quickly address it. And essentially, let's not forget that Hangout is a semantically rich environment. A lot of things are happening, and information is exchanged quickly on many different levels. And as such, it's going to evolve. Hangouts where we can actually shop in. So basically we'll be using the hangout environment to shop directly after a show or presentation or even during it. And it makes sense also to perhaps have some kind of potential for advertising, provided of course that adds value to the entire thing. To have advertising that is simply advertising and become annoying very quickly, and the moment it becomes annoying, the value goes right down. So it's how it's how that's going to be handled. That's going to be key.

So the question he is addressing is one that I also suggest is an issue. Is right now the way this new thing, which is called Promotions, is built is very similar to the concept of the Q&A app. In other words, when you are in a Hangout On Air that's activated this function, when you click on it,— it opens up to take over the whole screen. It's a bigger viewing environment, which means the comments are no longer visible. And this is where the struggle is. Because— and this brings that question back to the fore of where are people watching, right? Where are they watching these things? Because I keep saying to the developers, I like the idea, but you're taking over the screen and I cannot get to my comments for my interaction that's happening inside the event. And then some of the developers or other people are saying, well, nobody's watching on the event page. Why do you keep saying that? And so that's why I'm trying to gather hard data to show that there are people watching on the event page and they are interacting with these comments. So this, this is, it's all tied together with some of these things we're talking about. So for, to answer Wayne's question directly, I am concerned that when you click a button and it expands so that you can now see things on the side where you could click, just like what was known as a shoppable Hangout. This is going to be a potential conflict with the ability to build trust and interaction that normally happens with comments. So I've asked— and I'll throw that out there since it's a public forum— I've asked the engineers, can you try to find a way that allows us to have the option to view the event or the ads and go back and forth between them rather than having to solidify and say once you start looking at the ads or the clickable things, you can't see any of the comments. And so it's a physical space environment that's going to be the issue is where— how do they make those ads clickable on the side? So right now my first take on it is just like I have with the Q&A app is I'm not a fan of it because it takes away what I think is a more valuable engagement, which is what happens inside the event.

I agree about the Q&A app. And yes, again, the execution is key. Anything which is detrimental to the value of the interaction on a human level is going to have an impact on the relationship building aspect and runs the risk of turning the Hangout environment, which we value, as an engagement tool into a purely broadcast one, and that would actually reduce the value to the entire enterprise, really. So yes, how it's executed is key.

Which is where some of the comments I'm seeing— Krishna Day saying— I got your name right, Krishna— that some of the bigger brands she sees using are actually possibly using the event tool, but they're turning off comments. So in essence, they just they just broke the biggest part of this engagement.

Yes, but again, it's a mindset, isn't it? I mean, if you're coming into Hangout technology as a brand, the instinctive reaction is to use it as a broadcast mechanism from one to many, because this is what legacy brands have traditionally done since the beginning. To actually get into the engagement where you will have potentially real-life live feedback and have to deal with it on the fly, that takes tremendous amount of confidence in your ability to deal with it and tremendous amount of trust in your audience to behave. And I use that in the broadest sense of the word.

Yeah, and as well as trust in your team. In other words, you might be the person in charge of all this, do you trust your team to actually be available to answer on-the-fly questions?

Yes, which is why Hangouts are so disruptive really. It's not just a tool for a business to actually connect with its audience, but it's also a tool that forces a business to refocus on itself and actually change internally. And the trust that Ronny just mentioned now, you know, if you haven't got it in the first place, coming into a Hangout environment is a recipe for disaster because the people you have in place, the only way you have of controlling them in a legacy way is by giving them a script. And forcing them to never deviate from it. So suddenly the very human connection we have here, the fact that we have banter and jokes and we can go off on a tangent, disappears. So imagine if I mention something to Ronnie and I say, "What did you think of that film last night?" and he goes, "The Hangout technology is very good," because that's what he's been scripted to say. I mean, immediately you think this is so false and so fake and we're not stupid anymore, we can see it. So it backfires very quickly. It goes from being a brand-building tool to perhaps a brand-destroying tool. So this is why it's so disruptive in terms of how it's applied, and that needs to be taken on board every time a brand comes into a Hangout environment. You need to think deeply about it.

So I wonder, when Google creates the add-ons that they do, many times they are built in maybe an enterprise concept, the big picture. Where, for example, the Q&A app is a wonderful explanation for this. It allows hundreds and hundreds of people to add questions and let others vote and say, I like this to be the best question, and it rises to the top. Conceptually, that all makes sense, but from a practical perspective, all those other questions now have less value. Yes. And so as a result, they are no longer possibly even going to be part of what's going on. And therefore the interaction is squelched. And so that's a higher or different perspective, I think, than the smaller business person that is willing and able and wanting to address any and all questions that are coming in.

Well, personally, you know, personally I'm not a fan of the Q&A tool. However, from a purely enterprise perspective, I can see that it is always easier to sell because— to sell to the enterprise because here's what you tell them. Essentially your event page is inert, it's done its job and it looks dead and everything happens within the Q&A environment and you only answer the questions which are most relevant to the watching audience and that's it. You can safely ignore the rest in many ways without any pushback and it allows a certain level of confidence to be built automatically because you think you have a semblance of control. The big win always in Hangouts is how natural they are. And we talk about how the entire engagement on digital world is becoming more and more granular, and it's becoming more and more responsive. So Hangouts are part of this. The moment you sort of solidify them, as Ronnie has said, all you're doing is you're fixing them. It's like having another TV set with a little bit of functionality thrown in. It's not a big win. And I think brands will soon discover that. But from my perspective, anything that brings brands in initially is good, because we want them to be part of the conversation. And then the moment they're here, they're only going to sort of become more and more involved, more and more engaged, and it has to be a sort of step-by-step kind of process rather than just leaping in with both feet and getting burned.

OK. We have a question here. And he had put it up earlier, but I wanted to wait until we had talked more. David Leopold is asking, what HOA technology features do you think Google will present? And I address that to Ronnie.

I am assuming he means— future features. Yes. So one of the things that just was announced, I think yesterday or the day before, I forget now, this is what's called plugin-less Hangouts. The ability to— many of us take this for granted because we've been using the Hangout tool for so many years potentially now that we forget that when we first started, we had to actually download a thing called a plugin, and that plugin had to be installed on our computer such that when we come into this video conversation, it worked. And because it's only a one-time process and you didn't really have to do much with it, we all forgot about it. But the brand new people that are just now discovering and just now coming into Hangouts still have to go through that process. So just within the last couple days, they've made a public announcement that there is a plugin list it's called WebRTC ability to do Hangouts. And this is going to be— and I verified this, and it's okay to say publicly because I'm part of a testing environment where they— I have to be careful about what I can say, what I can't. They've recently allowed me to say that I'm part of the testing environment, so yay, I can expose that. But there are some things that are still under non-disclosure that I'm not to talk about, but this has been given permission, so here's the big deal. In the future, and it's starting with Chrome because Chrome is owned by Google, that's a browser, you will be able to start up a brand new Hangout without ever having to upload or, I'm sorry, download a plugin. So the ability to run a Hangout, one of the barriers to get people into the Hangout is now being removed, and it's being removed quite quickly actually. The ability, if you're using Chrome— and it's gonna— this is on the edge of what I should say— it's coming where more and more people will be able to do this without ever even knowing it. And I asked, is it okay to say this? They said yes, it's seamless. What seamless means is if you've had the plugin in the past and now you're going to not be needing it, you don't have to do much, it just does it. So it's just automatically going to happen. And you might see— and this is one of your little indicators— you might see a little dialogue at the very top of your browser saying Would you like to allow Chrome to use your camera and microphone? And if you say yes, now you are plugin-less.

That's brilliant. So you wouldn't even need a G+ account then, or—

That, I still believe you're going to need a G+ account. It's just the technical thing to run to get in, you don't have to go through the process of installing a plugin. You just open it up inside a browser that supports it. Meaning Chrome at first. And then you'll be able to run your Hangout without having to go through any technology connection thing. You say, yes, I'd like to allow the camera to be seen, and now you're on.

It also means— and this is a big win— it means that the computer will be using fewer resources to actually run the Hangout, which means it's more stable, and it'll be applicable to many more operating systems. And the other thing is that any updates will be on the browser automatically. So you won't have to download any other updates to your hang out. So any new features or any new refinements, they'll happen automatically in the background, pretty much like they happen with the Chrome browser at the moment. And that includes security features. So it's a huge win. And I think it's fantastic. Again, Google is taking all the strain away. So we can just enjoy the technology. And it becomes more and more invisible on how it operates.

And one little tiny bit just to add on to that. What Dave is saying is very accurate in the sense that the computer is doing less of the work when this browser run thing is happening, and as a result, the strain on what's called the CPU, the brains on your computer, is less. And that means the lower the quality of the computer is, is going to be less of a limiting factor, whereas it is right now. The quality of our visuals is somewhat dependent on what our computer has as well as the internet connection. I mean, that— I don't know if that's ever going to go away, but the computer part is going to be less of a bigger deal because of this newer version of the way it's coming through, which is going to allow people with maybe lower-end computers to still get good quality Hangout visuals while they're in the middle of doing a Hangout, as long as they have good internet. Yeah, exactly.

Well, you think that'll start allowing us to start Hangouts from mobile then? I mean, a live show?

Well, you just threw in another word called mobile. I didn't say mobile. I know you didn't. That's why I was asking. OK. I've been asking for the ability to start Hangout On Air from a mobile device for quite a while. I have not yet won that battle. So I don't know, honestly, because I think there's two levels of concern with mobile. When you have mobile, you have a system that is potentially less stable than when you're in a wired environment or even potentially a Wi-Fi environment. You may have bursts of speed that are really good, but it's not as consistent. And I think that is the drawback to trying to run Hangout On Air from a mobile device. If you're invited in to a Hangout On Air from a desktop, which is how we do these now when we're out mobile, the mobile comes in as a remote camera, in essence, that is still relying on the consistency of the desktop. Whereas if you were to start with the broadcast from a mobile device and the consistency disappears, there's a good chance that the Hangout would break. And so because of that, I think it's less likely until there's a more consistent environment within the mobile world for us to be able to start I don't think it's because the technology won't allow it. I think it's just because they've made a decision. They would rather have a more consistent environment, which means unfortunately for those of us that want to be mobile and start a broadcast live from the streets, it's still going to need someone else somewhere else in the world, which is actually kind of neat. I can, I can be in Colorado and call up David and say, David, would you please start something up so I can join in with my cell phone? And if he's available and able to do it We can do that, so it is very flexible, but the ability to start a Hangout On Air from a mobile device is still not there, and I just don't know if it's coming anytime soon.

Can I just quantify that? Because I love what you said. You're right. But? Extending the conversation on disruption, an indication of how disruptive Hangout On Air technology is actually going to be. And actually Google has begun looking at ways to disrupt the ISP industry and the mobile telecommunications industry in a nice way regarding this kind of connectivity and this kind of activity. So essentially we're seeing here the beginnings of a technology which was very quietly introduced, constantly expanding and refining and driving a human connection, and behind it and around it all we begin to see incremental change changes in the physical world. We're going to see different kind of connectivity on mobile devices taking place. At the moment it's still very much locked in and throttled by your individual carrier. We're going to see different kind of environments being set up in terms of how we access Wi-Fi hotspots. So all this is coming, it's in our future and it's happening so quietly. So yes, you're absolutely right in why it hasn't happened and it's going to evolve further.

I do know, and this might be on the edge of what I can and can't say, so if I say something wrong, don't tell everybody I said it, that the Wi-Fi environment, which has always been— here's, as a trainer, I've always told people, plug in a wire. If you can, plug in a wire to get a better consistent connection, and that's going to give you the best quality. And I still stand by that. But Wi-Fi, which is something that's similar in a sense as to the consistency levels within a mobile environment, Wi-Fi has the problem of really good quality and then it goes down and then it comes back up again and then it goes down and comes back up. And if you think of it from an engineer perspective, you might go for the lowest possible quality and say, well, that's what we've got consistently, so we're gonna stick with that. And then they lower the quality of what we've got. And I believe they're working on trying to allow more variance so that when the quality goes back up, that the Hangout can actually grab the better quality feed. And then if it goes down, then it goes to a lower quality. But then— so it's various, has this variability, and I believe that's something they're working into the process. And when that becomes more part of it, then it's going to be less important to possibly have a wire and probably less important for your mobile connection to stay as consistent. Yep, very good.

Alright guys, we still have some time left, so if you have any questions for Ronnie Ora, David, please leave them in the comments section. We're getting a lot of nice conversation between people here talking to each other, which is one of the beauties of this comments section and not the Q&A app, is you can engage with each other in this wonderful thing we call a Hangout on Air. Yeah, can I—

I was going to say, can I just leap in there? Because you actually highlighted something really important which many brands actually miss. And the fact is that an event page can kickstart a conversation. Which actually takes place between the participants on the event page and may not even include the direct participants of the Hangout itself. And this is a sense of actually building a community and an audience. Now brands are conditioned that, you know, they need a platform, they need people to listen to them, and if you're not really responding to them or addressing them, you're not listening to them. This is not true. You can have a thriving community of people interacting with each other and adding value to them and actually meeting up because of you, which means you become a catalyst without having this direct connection all the time. And again, this is a fine point in terms of how you build brand equity and find your audience. Hangouts are fantastic in this. You know, it couldn't happen any other way so easily. And yet they miss the point. And this is something, you know, we need to keep this in mind every time we start a Hangout.

Good point. And you need to be able to engage to that point and get people engaging with each other. I think depending on how you present that Hangout is more of an experience rather than a lecture.

Yes, definitely. Yes, and it certainly cannot be a broadcast platform because that tradition leaves very little room for any kind of engagement. You know, you just got to sit there and passively consume the information, which is not what a Hangout is all about.

I like this comment from Mark Farasi: I love Google disruption. In many ways, there are always working themselves into markets. Many times folks don't notice it until it's too late. They are masters at the art of disruptions that become part of our daily lives.

Well, Mark is absolutely right. I mean, one of Google's ways of working is that it constantly tries to disrupt itself by bringing up new things, and essentially in many ways their approach is, let's throw this up and see how it sticks and how we go from there. Not many companies can comfortably work like this. I mean, for most companies their development curve is fairly straightforward, they go up to a certain— there's a struggle to get to the top, once they get there they become risk adverse and they don't do anything that may upset the balance and risk losing them their hard-won gains, which is why we get a very blunt world in many ways. Google is constantly at war with itself, it's constantly challenging its own beliefs, its own ideas, It brings in new things, and sometimes we witness things which come in and die off simply because there's not sufficient uptake. And this is part of the natural process. We need to understand that and accept that, again, this is part of the change we should be able to live with in the future. Great.

All right, so we still have some time left if anyone has any questions. If not, we're going to ask a couple more questions of our guests myself, and I'm thinking about, you know, this whole medium of Hangouts and what we've learned to get from it and how to use it. It's a constantly adapting, moving platform. So I think one of the hardest things for people to accept is that they'll come on and it won't be the same, and they get a little freaked out by that, you know.— and this is a reason why I'm in Ronnie's community is because he doesn't get freaked out by anything. He just figures it out and teaches us. But I mean, for the people, and especially now if you can join a Hangout via Chrome without any having to add anything on, I think we're going to have more and more people coming on and seeing everything here and not being able to use it or not knowing, you know, and then being afraid. It's not going to be intuitive. I always hear, It's not intuitive. It's not intuitive. I don't understand that because I'm old and I figured it out. So it's intuitive.

OK. Let me add something else to this. And you're quite right. Essentially, any kind of Hangout is a 3-part deal. You have the presenter and the host. And they are critically important in setting the tone and bringing part of the audience in there. You have the guests. And they have their own audience and their own voice and style. And then you have the audience you bring in, which makes every Hangout totally unique. I mean, you can have 6 Hangouts in a row about the exact same thing. If you have 6 different hosts, even if you have the same guests, the audience is going to be different, the conversation is going to be different, and the values that will be released from that are going to be also different. And it just draws attention to the power of the human connection. It's like almost like meeting people for a drink in a pub, and that's never the same even though you do it every Friday. You don't go there expecting exactly the same rerun of last Friday's talk. It just doesn't happen, and this is the freshness and the power of a medium which is digital, and we never really had it before, and that's why it's so addictive.

Yeah, and as far as change, this is the constant part, right? Change. The tool will continue to change even Little things like what we used to have on the inside when we would click on someone and it put a box around it. That box allowed you to focus the camera, and it still does, but instead of it being a blue box, it's now a white box. And so I've started using the, the official name, which is called pinning. So it's— I'm having to try to get it out of my vocabulary, this blue box thing, and it just keeps on coming. But the idea is the functionality hopefully is getting better, and as far as I'm concerned, it is. But as far as visibility and when you get there and buttons you press, I was just telling both David and Chef Dennis when I got here that in the process of coming into this Hangout On Air, I started taking screenshots because this is the latest version, and I'm gonna be sharing that with the Hangout Mastery group just to remind them these are the steps that you go through when you actually get into a Hangout On Air. Because not everybody in the Hangout Mastery has mastered the tools yet. Some of them are brand new to learning Hangouts, but they know— and this is where I would bring David back in— they know that the value of their first impression is important. And David, you and I two years ago, two and a half years ago, talked about this.

I was thinking of the exact same thing as you said all this, you know, because the temptation here is to think that because it's visual communication and it happens relatively easily It's an easy thing to do, and there's a big difference between achieving the visual connection technically, as we've done here, and actually doing it right. And for that, you always need a little bit of training. You always need to know the language, to know the schematics, to know exactly what you need to do in order to get your message across. And if you don't, what happens is the technology which is supposed to enable you actually becomes a barrier. Your message is lost. You're doing it wrong. Things don't gel, and the whole experience is tainted. So having access to expertise— I always say follow Ronnie's posts, because he tells you pretty much everything you need to know. If you need extra help, go to the Hangout Mastery class. Basically, you learn there pretty much everything you need to know, everything Ronnie knows, almost. And you get to interact.

You get to interact with other people that do the Hangouts. And so you get to test and play things play with each other's methods, and this is part of the community. I mean, the community is growing together and learning how to do these well, which is really, really good. Exactly.

I was going to say, one of the best parts of your community is all the support you have, because you've got all these people that are willing to help each other. And, you know, without that support— you know, because of that support, you showed us what we can do outside of the realm, outside of the box of Hangouts by taking it to the street and showed the importance of having these other people help you. And there's not going to be— we're not going to be as limited because of this. And we all have friends that can do other things, but they're not always technically as inclined. And you need people that know their way around a Hangout.

I'm going to bring up two comments from Tessa. One is saying that, in essence, she's having a harder time selling them on the fact that it's a good thing that things keep changing. This— these are people potentially that have just not been around the internet very much, and the speed at which the change is happening is increasing, and I don't see it slowing down. I just think because of the way the technology is— well, think of it this way: we're able to reach out now to people across the world and interact and come up with an idea and implement. In a day, right? We could never do that before. And so just the very fact we're in Hangouts allows myself and David and other people across the world to meet and come up with a plan, go do it, refine it, and within a very short period of time we can have something made that would have taken a lot longer before. Multiply that by the fact that it's hundreds of millions of people all over the world doing this The speed of change is not going to slow down. If anything, it's going to increase. So the ability for people to try to grow and learn on how they deal with change, I think, is a big factor. It's gotta be. Yeah, agreed. Okay, let me bring up another question that, that Tessa had. And this one, she's saying, what do you think is a good combination of presentations and chat time? For a Hangout On Air?

Ooh, okay, here's the prescriptive answer on this one, right? And the answer is that really depends on your style, your subject matter, your audience, and your guests. And the deciding factor always is value. Having a Hangout is a huge responsibility because essentially it's an unsigned contract between you and your audience. They have freely given you their time and attention on the expectation that they're going to learn something of value. If you're going to use that as a platform to simply project and broadcast what you want without any thought to what you want to achieve in terms of value for your audience, then you're going to be on a losing proposition no matter how you split it. So really add value every second of the way if you can,, and then that's a winning proposition. You don't have to worry about anything else.

Excellent. I want to pop this up. Where is it? Carmen. How you doing, Carmen? Good to see you today. The blue box is now white. Is that like the black box on planes or orange? And the black box gives off a ping. Ronnie Binzer is flying too.

Brilliant. Speaking of flying, if everything works out, I will be in Oshkosh, Wisconsin end of July, early August at what's called the EAA, or Experimental Aviation Association. They've got 3 names. They call it AirVenture, they call it Oshkosh, and they call it EAA. No confusion there at all. Yeah, no, not at all. But I hope to be broadcasting live from this large event where there's planes, and these are the brand newest technology as well as some of the oldest technology all combined, and it's kind of a neat environment. So she's talking about planes and flying. We'll throw that in there. Yeah. That'll be fun.

Are you going up to visit— is that where your dad is in Wisconsin or—

I'm actually going to— this will be in Oshkosh, which is not where my dad is. So I'm— hi, Dad. But I probably won't be seeing him on this particular trip because we're going to be busy doing a lot of broadcasting, I think, from the event in Oshkosh.

And as a possibility, I may be in Madison towards the end of July too. So that'll be my chance.

Oh, really?

Well, we'll have to talk about that later.

Alright, well guys, this has been great. A lot of good questions, a lot of nice talk about everything about Google+ Hangouts and not just your basic technical thing because there's a lot more behind it that people need to understand and you really brought a lot of things to the forefront. I love the word disruptive because as a teenager I was always disruptive but it wasn't It was a bad word then, wasn't it?

How times have changed.

Times have changed and now it's good to be disruptive, so I like that. So David, thank you so much for being here as always. Thank you. Wonderful to see you and a great part of this conference. Ronnie, as always, you're my hero. I don't know what I would do without you.

That's very kind of you. Thanks for having me on the show.

And Ronnie's got legs and I have pictures, so I'll share those with you later.

Alright, thank you all. Proof of concept, right? Proof of concept, first step in the Hangout Mastery Group.

And thank you all for joining, and I will be back to see you in about an hour as we continue the 2nd Annual Virtual Bloggers Conference live on Google+ via Google+ Hangouts. See you all soon. Take care.