YouTube embraces Google+ Hangouts for live streaming

YouTube is closely integrating Google’s Hangouts group video chat platform with its live streaming in an effort to make video watching more social. The site has already quietly begun to make live video feeds available to Hangouts users, and will eventually add tools to improve discovery of live streams both within Hangouts and on YouTube.com, I was told by YouTube Live Product Manager Brandon Badger this week.

Hangouts has been joined at the hip with YouTube ever since the chat platform launched as part of Google+ at the end of June. Hangouts users can launch YouTube videos right from within the group video chat, and up to ten participants can watch the same video simultaneously.

How to watch YouTube Live in Hangouts:Start a Hangouts session in Google+ and invite your contacts to join you.In a separate browser tab, head over to YouTube.com/Live and select a live stream of your choiceCopy the YouTube video I.D. of the selected live stream. Not sure how to find it? Just click on the share link below the video. You’ll get to see a link like http://youtu.be/XXXXXXXX – the cryptic code after the slash is the video I.D.Switch back to hangouts, open the video tab and search for the I.D.Click play, and you’re all set.

So far, only recorded videos have been featured within Hangouts, but Badger is going to officially reveal at Vidcon in Los Angeles Saturday afternoon that users can easily watch live streams together as well (check out a step-by-step guide in the box on the right if you want to try this yourself).

The current method of manually searching for live video feeds is somewhat cumbersome, but YouTube is actively working on a much closer integration. Soon, it will feature ongoing live streams within the YouTube tab of Hangouts. The next step after that will be to directly integrate Hangouts into YouTube pages for live streams. “We would show you some of the available public Hangouts,” Badger told me during a phone conversation, adding that these Hangouts would be featured right next to a live stream.

A final component will be personalization: Imagine you’re going to watch a soccer game live on YouTube.com, and you can immediately see which of your friends have joined up in a Hangout to watch the same game. Badger couldn’t give me any time line for the integration of these features, but he assured me: “It’s something we’ve been working on.”

Live streaming providers have long experimented with audience participation, and a number of platforms now offer integration of Facebook and Twitter live feeds during events that are broadcasted live online. YouTube has in the past experimented with this as well, and Badger said live streams regularly provoke more commenting than prerecorded YouTube videos.

The face-to-face interaction of Hangouts takes this type of interaction one step further. Users are able to talk to each other in real time while watching a sports game, a concert or a newscast, much as if they were sitting on the couch together. The limited nature of Hangouts — only ten users can chat with each other at a given time — also adds a sense of intimacy that’s lacking from a Twitter or Facebook feed.

However, the ten-person-limit has also been a point of contention, especially around popular Hangouts. Some users have already taken matters into their own hands to circumvent the limit. When musician Daria Musk had her first Hangouts concert two weeks ago, users simply daisy-chained multiple Hangouts to offer more than ten people to join in on the fun.

Musk’s second concert was streamed live on Hangoutparty.com, a site that has since been offering live screencasts of other Hangouts as well. Badger didn’t have any specifics to share about similar options offered by YouTube itself, but he said his team is certainly aware of the phenomenon: “We have definitely seen lot of demand to live stream Hangouts.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user kevindooley.

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Hangouts can turn broadcasts into a two-way medium

Indie pop singer Daria Musk spent more than six hours in a Google+ Hangouts session Saturday night, playing with a few fellow musicians in a recording studio somewhere in Connecticut and having people from all over the world listen in and cheer her on. However, the first ever live concert conducted in Google’s new group video chat service had one major constraint: Only ten people could join Musk’s Hangout at a time; others were told to try again later.

A number of audience members, including Google Engineering Director Chee Chew, figured out an imprmoptu way of daisy-chaining Hangouts, making it possible for others to join in on the fun by joining connected video chats. This type of Hangouts relay was a quick hack, something to deal with the fact that Google has restricted the number of live participants in Hangouts to ten — but it also hints at an interesting opportunity for Google to utilize Hangouts as a way to turn live online broadcasting into a two-way medium, that is capable of real audience interaction.

Live streaming has always lent itself to participation from the audience, something that broadcasters like CNN have utilized during events like President Obama’s inauguration to have people chat with their Facebook friends. Nowadays, integration with Facebook and Twitter comment feeds is a pretty common feature on many live streaming sites.

Now imagine if the same was possible with video interactivity. Let’s say Musk had streamed her concert live on YouTube, and people would have been able to form video Hangouts with their friends around that live event. Or take a broadcaster like CBS, which regularly broadcasts live news coverage of events online on Ustream. Imagine that CBS’s audience was able to tune in through something like Hangouts, with friends discussing the event in real time with face-to-face interaction.

Of course, the beauty of something like Google+ Hangouts is that it is more than just a broadcast. Tuning into a Hangouts session with Michael Dell and being able to talk business with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company is cool. Watching a live broadcast of Dell lecturing business 101 to thousands of passive viewers on the other hand may not be something you’d invite your friends to.

But celebrity Hangouts can also be a frustrating experience. Sessions regularly fill up in seconds as soon as a someone like Michael Dell advertises his willingness to chat. Now imagine how long the queue will be once all the celebrities that turned Twitter into a major success story arrive on Google+.

That’s why it would be great to see Hangouts take a hint from Chatroulette: What if someone like Musk could live stream a concert to thousands of viewers, coming together in hundreds of Hangouts sessions, and then jump from one of those sessions to the next, spending a few minutes here and there and giving her audience a feeling of being up close and personal?

It would be like having a viewing party for a concert where suddenly the singer appears in your living room — and it could finally turn live streaming into something that is more than just plain old TV on a smaller screen.

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Next up for Google Plus Hangouts: Sign language support

Google’s new Hangouts group video chat service has been a big hit with early adopters. Now the company is looking to make it more widely available without leaving anyone behind: Google is going to launch a field test with users fluent in American Sign Langauge (ASL) to make Hangouts more accessible to deaf and hearing impaired users.

The field test is spearheaded by Google Technical Program Manager for Accessibility Engineering Naomi Black as well as the Engineering Director Chee Chew, who kicked off the initiative with a post to Google Plus that explained his personal stake in the issue:

“One area that I’m personally quite passionate about is facilitating communications and community for the deaf. My grandfather, aunt, and uncle were/are all deaf. While I’m very much a novice, I find ASL to be a beautiful expressive language. I hope that Hangouts can be awesome for the deaf (and hard of hearing) community as well as the hearing.”

Video chat applications have long been used by hearing impaired users to communicate via sign language. Skype seems to be particularly popular with hard of hearing users, and some users have turned to the service to learn and practice sign language.

Google is asking Google Plus Hangouts users for feedback on sign language support.

Multiuser video chat would be the logical next step for hard of hearing users, but there are also some technical challenges associated with group video conferencing. Google Hangouts, for example, is optimized for audible communication, as it switches its focus between users based on their microphone input. The idea of this feature is to prominently display the video camera input of the user who is currently talking, which has the added benefit of giving users an incentive not to talk over each other.

Gauging participation based on microphone input levels obviously doesn’t work for users who communicate via sign language, so Google is now looking for other cues. “We need an indicator for who has the floor,” explained Chee in his post, adding: “I’m sure there are subtle issues that I don’t know.”

Making its video products accessible to deaf users isn’t just stewardship for Google; it could also help the company avoid future liabilities. Disability advocates have begun targeting online media offerings in recent weeks to force them to adopt closed captions for web video. Lawsuits against CNN and Netflix allege the companies discriminate against deaf and hard of hearing users by failing to provide captions for each and every video served online. Some of the points made by the plaintiffs in these cases could also be used to argue that a video chat service that focuses on audible speech discriminates against deaf users.

Regardless of the motivation, early feedback from Google Plus users about the Hangouts field test is overwhelmingly supportive and even enthusiastic. In a comment on Chew’s post, one user summed up his feelings this way:

“I actually cried with joy at reading this post and finding out that Google and the Google+ team actually care about all of their user base. Thank you very much for just thinking about us.”

Picture of kids learning sign language courtesy of Flickr user daveynin.

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