Shapiro’s talking about videoconferencing pioneers Cisco and PolyCom. He’s talking about Innovator’s Dilemma-style growth. And he’s talking about $17 million in new funding the company is announcing this morning to expand even faster, building its total venture capital raised to $116 million.

Vidyo, the company that supplies the technology for Google’s Google+ Hangouts and Nintendo Wii’s videoconferencing, is disrupting the fast-growing video communications world on at least three levels, Shapiro said.

One is technology: moving from the big, expensive telepresence rooms to simple, cheap, built-in components. Another is moving from on-premises solutions to the cloud, and the third is Vidyo’s business model: revshare partnerships with carriers and other partners, like NTT Telecommunications in Japan, Google, and 24 other new telecom partnerships inked recently.

The technology transitions are key, the company says.

“PolyCom and Microsoft say they’re doing it, but not well,” Shapiro states. “We are by far the leader here.”

And his model, he says, is also much more competitive than innovative upstarts like Blue Jeans Network, because he’s betting on a lower price point and higher numbers. Blue Jeans Network, which offers in-browser video conferencing that connects to legacy systems as well as integrations with partners like Salesforce, charges $.30 per minute per leg of the call, Shapiro said, meaning that a five-person one-hour call on Blue Jeans costs as much as an all-inclusive, unlimited $30-a-month subscription to Vidyo.

“I believe the price point is just starting to erode,” Shapiro says.

Which is why Vidyo’s sales model is partners, who then leverage the power of their own networks for Vidyo and grow its sales without Vidyo having to maintain a large sales staff. The strategy seems to be working: Vidyo partners like Arizona State University, which is using Vidyo on its Internet2 deployment, are increasing their usage of videoconferencing by an average 18 percent per quarter. And CERN, the European science facility with the world’s largest particle collider, uses Vidyo so intensively Shapiro told me it has 15X Blue Jeans call volume alone.

“We want to price equivalent to a voice call,” Shapiro says. “Our competitors offer an inferior product for more money: Blue Jeans 15 time more, and other competitors 300 times more.”

I’m sure his competitors would have something to say about that, and it’s certainly the case that Blue Jeans and others offer features that Vidyo does not. But with $17 million new cash in his pockets, Shapiro is focused on the future.

“Things are going great, but we always find ourselves working on many things,” he said. “We want to make sure we have the resources to take advantage of the opportunities we see … it’s almost a land grab in the industry.”

The $17 million is almost all from existing investors, including in some cases general partners’ own money. Two-thirds of it is from Triangle Peak Partners. With the new cash, Vidyo will grow headcount from 285 to about 320, CFO David Kaminsky said.

photo credit: courosa via photopin cc

Ever wanted to hangout with astronauts? Sure you have.

Well, today’s your lucky day. Google and NASA are hosting a Google+ Hangout with three astronauts that are currently stationed on the International Space Station. The Hangout begins at 7:30 a.m. PT / 10:30 a.m. ET and should last an hour.

NASA astronauts Kevin Ford and Tom Marshburn and Canadian astronaut (and the best Facebook photo-taker ever) Chris Hadfield will be on hand to answer questions and talk about their experiences.

NASA is going to mostly select the questions in advance, but you can still submit questions while the Hangout is in progress through Google+, Facebook, and Twitter using the hashtag “#AskAstro.”

The video above will be live soon with the Hangout.

Until now, it’s been a mystery who was providing the video-conferencing technology in the Wii U. It turns out that Vidyo, the same company that powers Google Hangouts, helped Nintendo deliver living-room teleconferencing.

Vidyo is “disrupting” business-to-business video conferencing with a fairly radical price point — free — and is now looking to expand its reach in business-to-consumer, via the living room.

“We’re trying to bring video-conferencing to the world,” Vidyo chief executive Ofer Shapiro told me last week. “We want to carry it to the masses.”

That’s not because Vidyo wants to display Skype for simple person-to-person video communication. Rather, it’s because it sees a whole new consumer platform based on simple, high-quality, living-room teleconferencing capability.

“Imagine the yoga teacher doing online yoga to 50 people,” Shapiro said. “Think about an audience of 100 million people … for instance buying a subscription for an online Zumba class.”

People have that capability now, Shapiro admits, on devices such as laptops, tablets, and netbooks. But when it’s in the living room, on the big screen, it’s different, he argues. Different enough to create a new way for content creators, teachers, coaches, speakers, and others find and build an audience for live video content.

“The big screen,” he told me,” is more social. You can move around … certain things are better in that environment. Also some people are still more fearful of computers — this reduces the barrier. It’s a market expansion.”

The first uses of Vidyo’s technology, of course, are the in-game experiences and the video chat built into Nintendo’s Miiverse. It’s a software-based solution that runs on Wii OS and does not require any special hardware, Vidyo’s senior VP Amnon Gavish, told me.

Gavish would not reveal the quality of the Wii U’s video-conferencing technology, saying only that it is “excellent, but not trying to have the same quality as a professional system.”

With this deal, Vidyo now has more than 25 partners including Google, NTT, Philips, and others who are bringing its technology to market. Most of those are revenue-share deals focuses on expanding the market for video-based conferencing. Now with Nintendo, Vidyo has a unique opportunity to hit the mainstream — and the living room — at the same time.

That all depends, however, on whether the Wii U is a market success or not.

Google and the NFL have teamed up to make fantasy football more real for pigskin fanatics everywhere.

Wednesday, in advance of the 2012 football season, the companies announced that they’re adding Google+ hangouts to fantasy football pages. The team-up will give people a one-click way to video conference with their fellow league compatriots.

Participants will be able to initiate Google+ Hangouts with league members and be alerted when anyone in their league is already “hanging out.” The functionality is designed to make for more dynamic fantasy draft sessions, spirited trading discussions, or interactive game-day viewing parties.

NFL commentators will also make appearances and host Hangouts each week for a rundown of each week’s fantasy football highlights.

“Because most fans select their fantasy rosters in real time, and many leagues consist of people from across the globe, we think you’ll find that hangouts are a natural extension of your (healthy) obsession,” Google+ product director Nikhyl Singhal said in a blog post.

The Google-NFL hook-up is an interesting one that will not only provide more web exposure for the (arguably) coolest feature of Google’s social network but will also introduce the video chatrooms to broadcast viewing audiences. The NFL Network plans to pluck the best soundbites from commentator Hangouts each week and broadcast them on air.

Photo credit: Danny E Hooks/Shutterstock

In its latest move, the company is adding  Google+ Hangouts to Gmail, continuing its efforts to bring the services closer together. Hangouts allows up to 10 people to video chat together, collaborate on documents, share their screens, and broadcast their conversations to the Internet.

With the new feature, Gmail users will be able to video chat with not only other Gmail users, but friends on Google + and the Google+ iOS and Android apps as well.

Google says the functionality also will make for more reliable connections, as the new system is built on Google’s network and not peer-to-peer technology like the old video chat. Rollout for the new functionality begins today and will continue over the coming weeks.

Google has been intent on extending its Google+ features to as many other services as it can. In June, it introduced YouTube parties, a feature that allows Google+ users to watch YouTube videos together online. We found the idea to be, well, silly, and it’s fair to assume that Google’s latest move will get a similarly icy reception.

Photo: Shutterstock

Google Plus, eat your heart out. Group video conferencing service Meetings.io has grown to 100,000 users since launching in April. The startup’s three founders have been heads down developing screen-sharing and file transfer features, released today, with lofty plans of taking on Webex and other clunky video conference services for the enterprise.

The promise of this Y Combinator company is a free tool to start conversations with anyone in the world in seconds, no registration required. If you choose to sign up, you’ll be given a permanent meeting room. Invite up to 5 friends into your room with a link (for example, Meetings.io/John), and share a side-by-side screen.

Since launching, the company has found a niche in supporting short-term contracts and one-off meetings. For this reason, Y Combinator became one of the first customers. The seed accelerator now uses Meetings.io to screen potential candidates and prepare successful teams before their arrival to the Mountain View headquarters. Once the meeting is over, contact information is not saved.

The lack of sign-in or registration is the major value proposition for the company. The reason I’ll switch over from Skype is that my contact list is bloated with former colleagues and one-time interviewers.

Video conferencing tools are proving to be a hot space for startups, but few — including Google — have succeeded in toppling the status quo. By targeting consumers first but avoiding gimmicky features like chat roulette, Meetings.io is slowly trickling into the enterprise in a manner akin to Dropbox or Yammer.

The company can continue to operate a free service and incorporate the standard features of a professional tool: high-quality video, a chat box, file transfer, and screen sharing. Anticipating early adoption from companies, the team has developed underlying technology to crack tough corporate firewalls.

At this point, the founders say they remain focused on designing a slick visual interface. One added perk you may soon see is the ability to accessorize your permanent meeting room in line with your decor. Mine may take on a swanky hot pink veneer.

“We’ve spent a lot of time on the design and asked ourselves, ‘what would WebEx or GoToMeetings be like if Apple designed it?’ We want the product to be intuitive for first time users and enable them to focus on the conversation, not the tools,” chief operations officer, Randy Lubin (pictured top left), told VentureBeat (in a Meeting.io video conference). Lubin, a Stanford MBA alumni, is the company’s first hire.

In April, the company hit the market with $1 million in seed funding from investors including Yuri Milner and SV Angel.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google recently revealed its social network Google+ will support check-ins for businesses providing discounts through their Google Places page. Today, the capability was launched, but only through the Google+ Android application.

The social network is purposefully getting outfitted with as many Google features as the company can pack into it. Larry Page noted after Google’s quarter three earnings that the Google+ team feels as if it has delivered the “plus,” but is now sewing in the Google. Recently, Google+ and YouTube were paired together for those who wanted to share what videos they were watching with their circles. The Google+ mobile app also recently received search functionality.

This new Google+ feature allows owners to promote their businesses not just on the Google Places page, but through the social network. Google Places lets business owners enter information about their companies, which then turn up in Google searches. On these pages, businesses can offer discounts that must be of good quality, or Google will remove them. Some of these offers must be redeemed at a specific location, think restaurants. When you offer a discount, now, you can force a buyer to check-in to that physical location on the Google+ mobile app to get the deal. Those who do check-in can opt to keep the check-in private, share with specific circles or make the action public.

Google’s intentions were originally uncovered by Mike Blumenthal was surfing the company’s Places help pages when he discovered a couple paragraphs on the launch. They read:

If your customers have to visit your locations in order to do business with you, you can request that they check-in on Google+ in order to redeem your offers. They can choose to share the check-in publicly or with some of their circles, which helps spread the word about your business on Google+. They can also choose to keep their check-in private and still redeem an offer.

If your customers do not have to visit your location, for example if you serve homes or businesses by delivery or by callouts, you can keep this option off (set to “No”) and customers will not be asked to check-in when they redeem offers. We use the Service Areas and Location Settings setting on your listing to determine if you have a service area for offers that have already been created. When you create new offers, you can choose whether to allow a check-in during redemption.

Google confirmed the move to VentureBeat and Marissa Mayer elaborated at technology conference Le Web saying, ““We think there are interesting ways we can monetize this, but also ways to help our users safe money.”

Ah, Google, ever advertising conscious.

[Hat tip and photo via MarketingLand]