Christopher Craft is a speaker and the author of O.P.E.N. Routine: Four Components to Personal Branding Excellence.

With Google+, Google is forming productive partnerships and building relationships with content/media makers from a variety of verticals. Their biggest push is in sports and entertainment.

Why are they doing this?

I was fortunate to have a recent conversation with Google’s Iska Hain about their big “why” concerning Google+’s work with sports influencers and she explained:

“In order to effectively build a community, you need to have the voices from many different perspectives ­ the passionate fan, the informed expert, or the newly converted. We believe sports users want to connect in a deeper, more meaningful way ­ connected by way of their common interests.”

I have direct experience with the work the Google+ teams are doing with media entities and content creators. In late January of this year, my agency received an email from a Google+ team member who was interested in working with our client Bomani Jones on special content for the NFL Combine. It’s not everyday that you receive an email from Google. They’re not the spamming type so I knew that it was something official. We eventually partnered with them to produce a well­-received Hangout On Air discussing post­-combine topics. My eyes were opened to the amount of attention that Google is giving to building authority for its influential users.

Building community is their transparent goal, but it’s no secret of the impact all of this will have on personalized search and distributed media content. The possibilities are enormous.

My conversation with Hain went beyond Google’s goals, motives, and mission behind Google+’s influencer engagement activities. Here are some observations and items from my experience, research, and our discussion:

Google’s Advantage

Google+ has a clear advantage over other social networks: They “own” search.

This is why they don’t seem to be terribly concerned about growing their membership at a certain pace (though they’re doing fine in that department ranking 2nd of all social networks in monthly active users). They know what they’re doing by positioning themselves to be the center of online authority. Their motives were clear with Google Authorship being one of the early features of Google+.

Their other clear advantage is access to talent. For example, they can handpick YouTube stars for easy collaborations.

Partnerships galore

Google+ has partnered with top global leagues like the NBA, NFL, and MLB, premier professional teams, and global athletes like David Beckham and Virender Sehwag. They’ve also done more one­off partnerships recently with personalities, athletes, and media entities of all kinds.

Not only does this allow these brands to attract their fans to the platform but it also gives Google+ the opportunity to bring brands, media, and fans together for compelling mashups.

Just hanging out (on air)

Google+ is constantly deploying new features that allows influencers to use Hangouts as platforms for real show­like production and interaction. Check out the Hangout they conducted with 2013 NBA All­Star and 2012­2013 scoring champion, Carmelo Anthony.

They will be making announcements of new Hangout features at their upcoming Google I/O 2013 event.

Strategic locations

Google offices have been springing up in different cities for a while now. The interesting part is how they’re strategically positioning Google+ teams to have access to specific verticals.

This reach gives them access to a wide variety of sports influencers. Their teams move around quite a bit, especially for major events; but their influencer relation crews in certain cities have focuses that stick (i.e. Atlanta:Football and Austin:Music).

The company currently has stateside teams in Boston, New York, Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, Denver, and San Francisco and international teams in Europe, South America, and Asia.

Communities

When Google+ unveiled Communities, they gave influencers a means to engage with their stakeholders in a more interactive way. Conversation can now flow both directions. This is crucial for the rapid fire nature of sports. Hain summarized this in our conversation:

“Google+ communities are an online place to explore and engage in the topics that matter most to you. From SEC Football to Knitting, communities afford users a place for users to connect with others who share their interests, using Google+ Hangouts, Photos or YouTube videos, for example.”

What does this mean for you?

Google established Google+ for the people.

My interactions with their team for various projects has featured overflowing support and concern for the development and distribution of good content. This Google-­supported content was well received by the fans of our clients. These experiences excited me and inspired me to write this article.

Your voice is valuable and has the opportunity to reach the people who value your platform.

Christopher Craft is a speaker and the author of O.P.E.N. Routine: Four Components to Personal Branding Excellence. He’s also the Chief Visionary at Nao Media and Consulting, a digital agency for the sports and entertainment industries. You can follow Chris on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, and circle him on Google+.

photo credit: Scott Ableman via photopin cc

The discussion, which will use Google+’s Hangouts on-air feature, which broadcasts video chats to the world on Google+ and YouTube, will focus on Biden’s policy recommendations on reducing gun violence. PBS correspondent Hari Sreenivasan, entrepreneur and author Guy Kawasaki, and YouTube sensation Phil DeFranco will join Biden in the chat. It’s happening tomorrow, January 24, at 1:45 EST.

To watch, simply tune in to the White House’s Google+ page or YouTube page.

But if you want to participate and submit your own questions, follow the participants on Google+ and, when they post a note about the Hangout, suggest your question in comments. (Here are Guy Kawasaki, Phil DeFranco, and Hari Sreenivasa on Google+.)

This is part of a series of Hangouts that White House officials have participated in over the past four years and plan to continue in President Obama’s new term.

My only question: Will Alex Jones (yes, the gun enthusiast who tried to get Piers Morgan deported and got a little animated on the Piers Morgan show) turn up to get his questions answered?

photo credit: foxypar4 via photopin cc

Not surprisingly, high up on the list is his new startup, Spreecast.

Google Hangouts on air, the Google+ video-conferencing technology that allows anyone to broadcast video to ten, a hundred, or a thousand people, just added Studio Mode, with higher quality audio — a feature aimed at musicians who are connecting with fans.

That prompted Fluhr to start telling his story a little louder … which included previewing three new features for VentureBeat that the Spreecast just launched today.

Source: John Koetsier

A spreecast with me, Jeff Fluhr, and a Spreecast staffer

Though Spreecast came out of private beta last fall, it’s still very much a beta product, sporting a beta tag just above its logo, and not even starting to focus on monetization yet. But the product is designed for real, deep engagement with tens, hundreds, or thousands of users.

And it does have a compelling story.

Social means what?

“The reason I started the company was I felt like the way we were all interacting on the Internet was dominated by text-based faceless interactions,” says Fluhr. “Tweets, status updates, posts … they’re all threaded, asynchronous conversations. There’s value to do that, but also disadvantages.”

The advantages of Spreecast, Fluhr says, include a better communication, a focus on nonverbal cues, and deeper understanding … all of which, he believes, allow people to get more done in less time. And he’s not too sure the current “social” vogue is all that social.

“Up until 10 years ago, ‘social’ meant you were going to do something with someone, live, together,” he says. “Now that word has changed … and it means something text-based online.”

So he started Spreecast to “make social face-to-face again.” And he doesn’t think that Google Hangouts on Air qualifies.

Better than Hangouts?

“Google Hangouts is limited to 10 people who are on-camera … the others are just watching,” Fluhr says. “For Spreecast, there could be thousands of people watching, and it’s very interactive. They can chat together, interact, or ask to get on camera.”

Source: John Koetsier

A viewer requesting his 10 minutes of fame

Plus, Google Hangouts is a Google+ service. That limits its effectiveness, according to Fluhr.

“You can only invite Google+ users, and anyone who wants to join your show has to sign up for Google+.”

Spreecast allows anyone to join, using Facebook or Twitter logins, and can be embedded on any site: a company’s home page, a blog, or even a Facebook tab. The service is platform agnostic, Fluhr argues.

Finally, Spreecast builds in features that enable simple management of events: the ability for fans or audience members to ask to go on camera, functionality for the moderators to preview them before putting them live, and the ability to put them on the main feed — and dump them if needed.

New features

To the existing Spreecast functionality, the company added three new features that Fluhr believes further enhances the platform for multi-directional communication.

First, Spreecast has created channels that brands, stars, or anyone can embed on their websites. Simply embed your channel once, and all your previous shows are accessible. Start a new show, and it’s automatically available to join at the top of the list.

Source: John Koetsier

Apparently Coco is popular on Spreecast. Two guesses what industry she’s in …

“We’ve also added clips functionality,” Fluhr says. “Most spreecasts are between 20 and 40 minutes, but if you want to share 30 seconds that’s really funny or really emotional, now you can grab just that clip and share it.”

All spreecasts are recorded and archived, and any user can take any slice, anytime, and embed it anywhere, share it on Facebook, or Twitter, or Google+, allowing the entire library of content to be shared in much more digestible bite-sized pieces.

And finally, the company added producer volume-control functionality. One of the problems with video conferences is differing volume levels … this allows a producer to simply level and standardize volumes for everyone.

All these features are leading to results.

Celebrities as diverse as Reese Witherspoon and Donald Rumsfeld have used Spreecast to speak to their fans. Actors from Glee and studios like Warner Brothers and Viacom have helped the site drive weekly active users up 240 percent since the beginning of this year … and overall user count has spiked by 33 percent in just the last month.

Better than Google+?

Every entrepreneur automatically thinks his or her solution is better than any competitors. If not, they shouldn’t be in the game.

Whether others agree or not … that is the question, no?

One plus to Google+ (oops) is that even though potential Hangout users need to be members, that’s still a large pool, probably well north of 250 million by now. That may not sound like much next to almost 1 billion Facebook users, but it is certainly nothing to sniff at.

And whether or not those 250 million are actually daily active users who are on the site, they’re people who don’t have to create a new account to see your content.

But the management and engagement functionality of Spreecast, in which any of 10,000 audience members can instantly become the star of the show, is a massive leg up on Hangouts on Air. So is the ability to embed the broadcast anywhere you want.

And they are a few features that Google should maybe consider.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photo pin cc, moriza via photo pin cc

Google’s Hangouts group video-chat on Google+ continues to be the social network’s most compelling feature. Today, Google is opening up the Hangouts On Air feature to all users, allowing them to broadcast their video chat sessions for the world to see.

Google first debuted the live-streaming feature last year, but it was only available to select performers and celebrities. President Obama and the Dalai Lama both used the feature to stream live video chats, which proved that Google+ Hangouts feature was robust enough to take on live-streaming mainstays like Ustream and Livestream.

You can make any Google+ Hangout live by clicking the “Enable Hangouts On Air” button, and it will then be accessible from your Google+ stream, your YouTube page, or your website (if you’ve embedded the stream). You’ll be able to see how many people are tuning into your live broadcast, and Google will also place a copy of your live Hangout session in your YouTube account for posterity.

Google says the feature will be rolled out over the next few weeks (I currently don’t see it in my Hangouts options). The company recently introduced a slew of new Hangouts apps and games, including Google Effects, which lets you add wacky accessories to your video like fake glasses and facial hair.