Channel 7′s breakfast show ‘Sunrise’ has made what it has described a “TV first”, using a Google+ feature to power behind the scenes footage for an hour this morning.
Between 7am and 8am AEST this morning, viewers watching the show’s online livestream were treated to a special, once-off backstage event showing live footage from studio locations including the control room and makeup department. However in a rather unique twist, Sunrise used Hangouts, a feature from Google’s new social networking tool Google+, to power the live event. According to Google, Hangouts allow users to chat with friends on the Google+ service via video and “hangout, any time, anywhere.”
Sunrise positioned five laptops with webcams around the studio, all of which were connected to the Internet and logged into the currently invite-only Google+ service.
It then rotated throughout the different images over the course of the hour, giving viewers a unique perspective on what occurs behind the scenes of the popular Australian breakfast show.
Unfortunately Sunrise was forced to show the webpage in the livestream, rather than allow Australians to visit the ‘Hangout’ on the Google+ site directly because of the limit of 10 concurrent users placed on each Hangout by Google during the preview stage.
Hangouts are proving to be popular with organisations looking to communicate via video, with computer giant Dell also eyeing off using the tool as a means of communication with customers once Google take the service out of beta mode.
Image credit: dailyinvention, Creative Commons
Why not just use another Google service, one that’s designed to do exactly this… Youtube Live…
But WHY? It’s cool, but why?
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