GigaOM » Google Hangouts

AT&T to allow FaceTime, other video chat apps over cellular for all customers

Erica Ogg — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:19:57 +0000

AT&T on Monday said it plans to more broadly enable the use of Apple’s FaceTime for users over its cellular network in the next few weeks, and by year’s end plans to allow video chat apps use over its network by all customers. This latest position on FaceTime and similar apps represents total shift from its position almost a year ago.

AT&T’s statement to the Verge on Monday notes that “by mid-June, we’ll have enabled those apps over cellular for our unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices from [Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry].” Besides FaceTime, Samsung and BlackBerry’s pre-installed video chat apps will also be included.

And more will be coming for all of its customers before the end of the year: “Throughout the second half of this year, we plan to enable pre-loaded video chat apps over cellular for all our customers, regardless of data plan or device; that work is expected to be complete by year end.”

When Apple updated its mobile video chat app to work over cellular last summer, AT&T came under fire when it announced subsequently that only customers who subscribed to one of its Mobile Share plans could use it. Several open internet groups threatened to file complaints with the FCC, calling the carrier’s policy a violation of net neutrality. Several months later, AT&T opened the service to anyone with an LTE device.

Based on broadness of the statement, it sounds like video chat apps like Google’s new Hangouts app, which is available over AT&T’s cellular network now for some iOS customers, will work over cellular for Android customers later on this year.

This post was updated on 5/21 to clarify that the iOS version of Google Hangouts is available for use over cellular networks now.

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Spreecast raises $7M to take on Google+ Hangouts

Janko Roettgers — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 11:00:23 +0000

Group video chat startup Spreecast raised a $7 million Series A round of funding for what it calls the web’s next conversation platform. Investors include Meakem Becker Venture Capital, GGV Capital and MentorTech Ventures, and they’re united in the hope that Spreecast will prevail despite offering a service that’s somewhat similar to Google+ Hangouts.

In short, Spreecast offers users the ability to set up video chats with up to four participants and broadcast the result to an unlimited number of viewers. Spreecast co-founder and CEO Jeff acknowledged during a phone conversation Thursday that Google+ Hangouts is the competitor that most closely resembles what his company is offering. But he also pointed out two key differences: “Google Hangouts is siloed within Google+,” he explained. Spreecast on the other hand allows hosts to embed video chats into any website, and integrates both Twitter and Facebook for social sharing.

Fluhr also said that Spreecast offers a more interactive experience even for users who aren’t on camera. Viewers of a group video chat comment on it via text chat, and organizers of a chat can pick anyone from that audience and invite them as guests in front of the camera – something that is much harder to do with Hangouts, especially when they’re live streamed to an unlimited audience. And sure, Google+ does offer a chance to comment on a Hangout, but that experience is still somewhat disconnected from the actual chat. “The YouTube player is a very passive experience,” Fluhr added.

It remains to be seen whether that’s enough to carve out a niche next to Hangouts, but Spreecast seems committed to be in it for the long run. Fluhr told me that the company is looking to monetize its service by the end of the year. This includes plans to give creators the ability to charge viewers a kind of attendance fee – think of a class with a fee for participants. Spreecast also wants to bring its service to mobile devices soon. Said Fluhr: “Mobile is the next objective for us.”

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Google+ ready for business with IT-friendly bells and whistles

Barb Darrow — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 16:18:55 +0000

Google is now pushing its Google+ social networking platform as part of its business-focused software. That should come as no surprise. It’s been apparent for months that Google was linking Google+ to everything and tightening ties between its social network and the Google Apps suite of word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications.

As of Wednesday, the company launched a set of new features for business users and is previewing them for Google Apps customers. Use of the features will be free through the end of next year, according to the Google Enterprise Blog.

There are the usual nods to IT. Administrators can now set company defaults for post restrictions and enable restricted Hangouts to facilitate private company-only meetings.

And Google Apps users will now get more control over the content they put on Google+. They can mark some posts as “restricted” which means they will remain private to the user’s organization and cannot be shared outside. And, Google Hangout video meetings are integrated with Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs.

Google Apps, the company’s response to the Microsoft Office juggernaut, used to be perceived as a lightweight among business users, but it has gotten considerable traction and has forced Microsoft to respond with Office 365. Companies like Backupify are banking big that Google Apps momentum will continue — offering ancillary services to the product.

Small companies and startups like the low price of Google+ and especially its Google Hangouts, which enables up to 10 people to video chat easily. Hangouts poses a challenge to Skype, which Microsoft bought last year and is busily tying it into its Office franchise. It’s also a way for Google to differentate Google+, which has met mixed reviews, from Facebook which has much less a business focus.

The fact that Google is touting Google+ for business users means that it will eventually start charging for the service, just as it morphed the freebie Google Apps into a commercial offering.

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Ambient video and the changing face of communication

Ryan Kim — Sat, 26 May 2012 12:00:24 +0000

This past week I wrote about Skype competitor OoVoo, which launched a new Facebook 12-way video chat app along with updateds to many of its other apps. While the Facebook app was the headline, what really stood out to me was my conversation with OoVoo chairman Robert Jackman. Jackman told me that OoVoo’s mostly young users — 60 percent of its 46 million users are under 25 — don’t use OoVoo like other people use Facetime or Skype: to make the equivalent of a phone call over video.

Many simply come home and leave OoVoo on in the background as they do homework or watch TV, sort of like an instant messager app. Friends jump on or jump off, checking in with each other and seeing what’s going on. The person who starts the video chats isn’t obligated to stay on. This is not appointment video: it’s ambient video, running in the background.

Video tells the story

”We’re moving to a different way of communicating,” Jackman said. “We’re seeing this long persistant use of video. This is how people are sharing their lives digitally.”

That got me thinking about the evolution video. It’s similar in some sense to how pictures have undergone a transformation. We used to take pictures to preserve memories, using precious film to capture significant moments. But with advent of digital cameras and later mobile phones with cameras, pictures became akin to a casual form of communication, giving rise to services like Instagram and others.

Video chatting and broadcasting is also evolving in a similar manner. We used to think about scheduling Skype chats and video conferences. Uploading a video to YouTube meant you often edited the video or at least reviewed it. But now, we’re seeing that video is becoming this casual, immediate medium that doesn’t have to convey anything special.

Cheaper broadband+free video services

Jackman believes the rise of ambient video is due to cheaper broadband and the growth of free services that allow users to use video with little regard to cost. The fact that video chatting can increasingly be multiparty also lends itself to this idea of video as an emerging background layer to life.

Google is seeing more people leave Google Hangouts on for long periods of time, according to Iska Hain, a company spokeswoman.

“We definitely see that use case, especially at Google where colleagues will jump into a Hangout from remote offices and we all do work together. Sometimes people do like to just ‘be around’ other people. There are cases of folks turning a hangout on while they go about cooking or knitting or painting,” Hain said.

Foursquare has set up a big screen video portal inside both of its New York and San Francisco offices that are constantly on, allowing people to see each other and organize impromptu meetings.

“I can just go up to the screen and shout someone’s name and they’ll come to the portal,” said Benjy Weinberger, Foursquare’s San Francisco engineering lead.

Increasingly comfortable with live-sharing

It’s not just with video conferencing. People are increasingly more casual with video sharing as well. I was reminded of this when talking to Bill Nguyen, the co-founder of Color. Color, as we wrote recently, has signed a deal with Verizon to put its live video-sharing app on Verizon phones. The app allows users to start recording a video and alerts their friends that a live broadcast has started.

When I first heard about that, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of sending out video before having the option to edit it. I don’t have any idea what’s going to happen at the end of that clip. But that’s where things are going. We’ve seen that with other live-streaming services: people are increasingly comfortable broadcasting their lives and letting the world see whatever happens.

Gil Eyal, vice president of marketing for Mobli, a mobile photo and video sharing service, said increasingly people are just uploading videos directly to the service without editing out mistakes or taking a look again at what they’re showing.

“We’re seeing more spontaneous video, it’s all raw and unedited,” said Eyal. “It’s just people being real and video becoming this common language.”

Not everyone is ready for this kind of spontaneous, always-on video world. But it’s a natural extension of the trends were seeing in technology and social media. The barriers separating the private and the public are crumbling thanks to social and technological tools that make it easy to share. The same ideas at work behind Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram, will also spur people to be more open and free with video.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock user Tyler Olsen.

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How connectivity is revolutionizing everything

GigaOM Edit Staff — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:00:01 +0000

Blazing fast networks, cheap silicon, always-on devices and a torrent of data will fundamentally change everything — how we consume media, how we work, how and what we buy and even who we are. The GigaOM team took 10 areas and examined how connectivity has profoundly changed them and will continue to change them in the future. We’ll dive into these ideas in even more detail at our GigaOM RoadMap event on Nov. 10 in San Francisco.

Cars	Drive the next always-on gadget Katie Fehrenbacher	Work	Work is no longer a place Jessica Stillman
Stuff	Access trumps ownership Katie Fehrenbacher	Data	Data is the new digital currency Derrick Harris
Media	We are all media now Mathew Ingram	Identity	Identity is an industry Mathew Ingram
Body	Your doctor is a chip Stacey Higginbotham	Travel	Go anywhere, instantly Colleen Taylor
Web	The future web is alive Om Malik	Location	Where is the new who Ryan Kim

Images courtesy of Tesla Motors, DaveBleasdale, Petteri Sulonen, KatBPhotography, Urban Aquarium Video and Light, xurde, guiguis, kowitz, Marc_Smith, Aperturismo.

Go to page 2 (of 11) on GigaOM .

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YouTube Hangouts: Google’s secret weapon for Facebook

Ryan Lawler — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:00:30 +0000

Google+ has already seen some heavy traction in the first six weeks or so, attracting more than 25 million users since launch. Its next big growth driver might not come from the “+ tab” that runs atop Google services like Gmail or Google Reader but instead from the massive audience of people who watch videos on YouTube.

When Google+ launched in late June, its Hangouts feature was seen as the killer app for connecting users with their friends. In addition to offering users a free and easy way to set up multiparty video chat sessions, it also integrated with YouTube, allowing users to create on-the-fly viewing parties with their friends.

Now YouTube has added Google+ Hangouts to its list of share options, making it even easier for users to launch an on-the-fly viewing party with friends. Those users will no longer have to launch a Hangout session from within Google+ and search for the video they want to share; now they can simply click a button in YouTube and have that Hangout session launch immediately.

We’ve long believed that online video distributors need to make it easier for users to share what they’re watching with friends, but so far few have made it easy to do so. That’s led to some hacks, like the introduction last year of YouTube Social, a chat room built around YouTube videos. Now YouTube can offer a better user experience with Google’s video chat service.

But integrating the social viewing element into the online video site isn’t just a plus for YouTube users — it could also increase user adoption at Google+ by offering a new entry point to the nascent social network. YouTube is the No. 1 video site in the world, serving up more than 3 billion video views each day. More importantly, it could bring a whole new group of users into the fold by hitting the mostly young, mainstream audience that tunes into YouTube for entertainment.

While Google+ has seen some quick and early traction, its user base is still crawling with the early-adopter tech set. To provide a real alternative to Facebook, it will need to get so-called regular users hooked on the service as well. Hooking into YouTube and providing video chat functionality that wasn’t previously available — and isn’t available on competitors like Facebook — is one way to do so.

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Look Ma, now the Alive Web is an infographic

Om Malik — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 19:19:16 +0000

As you all know, I have been harping on about the Alive Web for a bit — you know the web that goes beyond web pages and events to occurrences and interactions. And I am glad to see the phrase spread, thanks to folks such as Namesake. Rounds, a Facebook video app company has come up with an infographic that illuminates the Alive Web from the chat perspective, something I wrote about earlier. Check it out!

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Can 8×8′s new cheap video conferencing compete with free?

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:42:55 +0000

VOIP and hosting provider 8×8 announced a new video conferencing service Tuesday designed to appeal to the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market. The service, called 8×8 Virtual Room, provides unlimited video conferencing with up to 20 participants at a time for a low monthly fee of $199 a month — which is a major discount over most room-based systems. But can it compete with a growing number of free video chat solutions that have been rolled out for the consumer market?

8×8 Virtual Room was built on the company’s voice and video platform, and keys into its existing unified communications system. As many as 20 participants can join, either by clicking a web link or dialing into a toll-free number. There’s no equipment to buy and there’s no software necessary to download to make things work. There is, however, a $199 a month subscription fee for unlimited video conferencing. But only the host needs pay for that, and for a limited time 8×8 is offering a year of the service at a half-off, $99 discount.

Altogether, the service seems an attractive alternative to room-based systems from companies like Cisco and Polycom that are out of the price range of most SMBs. It’s even an attractive alternative to recently launched video conferencing services from companies like Vidyo and Blue Jeans Network that are also aimed at the SMB market. The main competition for 8×8 might not be from lower-cost solutions driving prices down in the enterprise market, but an influx of consumer technologies that are “good enough” and free.

The release of 8×8′s Virtual Room comes after Google unveiled its own multi-user video chat service Google+ Hangouts, which has proven incredibly popular even after just a few weeks after launch. While it only allows 10 participants at a time, instead of 20, some users have found ways to daisy-chain Hangouts sessions to enable a larger group to take part.

The timing also coincides with a big push by Skype to become ubiquitous on connected and mobile devices, in social networks and in the enterprise. Skype’s multi-user video chat service isn’t free, but at $8.99 a month Skype premium is cheap enough — and with hundreds of millions of users, it already has a large installed base. Integration with Facebook will only increase that number, as will the eventual integration with enterprise and consumer services from Microsoft, which acquired the video chat company for $8.5 billion.

It’s all about the “economics of good enough” — that is, why pay for enterprise features you might not need when good enough will do? For SMB users, the question is whether 8×8′s pricing, features and flexibility will be able to compete with consumer services that are much cheaper or even free.

Check out this video of 8×8 CEO Bryan Martin interviewed at GigaOM’s Structure 2011:

Watch this video for free on GigaOM

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Dell wants to use Google+ Hangouts for customer service

Janko Roettgers — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:54:28 +0000

Dell could soon use Google’s new group video chat platform Google+ Hangouts as an alternative to the traditional customer service call, according to the company’s chairman and CEO, Michael Dell.

Hangouts has been hailed as the next big killer app, and Michael Dell is obviously a fan as well. He’s used the video chat more than a dozen times since he joined Google+ in early July, and this Sunday, he posted the following question on Google+:

I am thinking about hangouts for business. Would you like to be able to connect with your Dell service and sale teams via video directly from Dell.com?

The reaction to his post was overwhelmingly positive, with hundreds of comments agreeing that this would be a good idea for Dell. And the idea is indeed intriguing: Some customer service needs are very similar, so having a service representative talk to a small group of customers at the same time could be more economical than the traditional one-on-one call. Using video could also humanize tech support, and group settings could even initiate self-help between customers.

One should note that Dell’s idea of launching a Hangouts session directly from Dell.com isn’t currently possible; Google+ is still invite-only, and Hangouts can only be started or joined from within the network. Google also hasn’t opened its social network for businesses yet, but the company is currently evaluating how to integrate brands and businesses into Google+.

Customer service has been one of the applications that has made Twitter attractive to companies like Comcast. Having the ability to directly talk to customers via group video chat could be the next step for many of these companies as they look for ways to take customer service beyond the traditional call-center script.

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Netflix: Is it broadband’s cash cow or data hog?

Stacey Higginbotham — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:38:29 +0000

We’ve recognized that Netflix has become the new face of evil for wireline Internet service providers as they seek to impose caps or tiers on subscribers, as AT&T recently did in May. But Netflix is also willing to play the part of consumer advocate, as it seeks to point out some of the bigger myths that ISPs perpetrate around broadband scarcity. In an editorial in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Netflix general counsel David Hyman disabuses people of the scarcity myth:

The analogy is a false one. Wireline bandwidth is an almost unlimited resource due to advances in Internet architecture. Adding more capacity is easy. The marginal cost of providing an extra gigabyte of data — enough to deliver one episode of “30 Rock” from Netflix — is less than one cent, and falling.

That’s a very different sum from what AT&T in May began charging customers of its DSL and U-verse services. AT&T is adding new charges that are 20 times the price of providing the service. Twenty cents a gigabyte is a far cry from the $4 or $5 being charged for the same amount of data by some cable companies in Canada, where consumption-based billing has long been an accepted practice. But it sets a dangerous precedent for much larger charges in the future.

From an ISP’s perspective, Netflix forces them to put out for investment and upgrades many don’t want to do. Hence the caps. But what if, instead of seeing Netflix as a bandwidth hog, ISPs viewed it as a gateway drug to subscribers choosing better and more expensive broadband connections?

As I consume more broadband, I also find it worthwhile to upgrade my broadband service to a higher-speed tier. Granted, not everyone is willing to do this, but as an early adopter I am pretty confident that more folks will join me in upgrading their service as cooler apps proliferate. And since providing broadband has a higher up-front cost for building out the infrastructure, it is a benefit to ISPs when more folks start to subscribe to the services they have built out.

But as Hyman points out, the issue may be less about investment costs for ISPs and more about protecting existing voice and pay TV businesses and keeping margins up as consumers bring more broadband-consuming devices into their homes:

Any such backlash would also likely focus on the anticompetitive aspects of consumption-based billing. With online-content delivery providers like Netflix and voice services like Skype experiencing explosive growth, competitors see consumption-based billing as a convenient way to slow that growth by making the use of online services more expensive.

Netflix is clearly not an impartial observer in this fight. And perhaps there are things it could or should do to make its traffic more ISP-friendly, but caps will hurt both Netflix, consumers and startups. Hyman closes with something we already know, that bandwidth caps stifle innovation and the growth of services such as Netflix, Skype, Google’s new Hangouts service and any number of services yet to be introduced. What’s ironic here is that some ISPs already get it, and they have built out the infrastructure for the future. Verizon has, Sonic.net in the Bay Area is and municipalities and Google are as well. We don’t have to live in a broadband backwater, but many of our largest ISPs think we should. What’s wrong with that picture?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Scott Feldstein

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