The Benefits of Google+ Hangouts

If you haven't tried it yet, Google+ has a great feature called Hangouts. You don't just hangout a traditional chat room where you type to each other, but you hangout in a video/audio chat area. With the camera on your computer or tablet, it links everyone up and you can see each other and chat by audio/video. It's nice to see facial expressions and hear voices. No more typing and skimming to read text to keep up with the conversation. Some say it's better than Skype.

You can broadcast live on Google+ and YouTube. You can host free conferences for up to 10 people at  once. 

This could be a great feature to use during book launches. Instead of hosting, the same old contests where people leave a comment and the winner is drawn and posted later, you could do this live. It would had more fun and be more like an actual event. You could schedule the event ahead of time and announce it to your Social Media networks so people would know what time to "tune" in.



Have you tried Google+? If so, did you use it for book promotion? Do you think it's better than Skype?
What are your thoughts?