Google Hangouts or Goto Webinar?

Mmiys,

Good points here. Why wouldn’t people use a free service over something else. I’m not familiar enough with Google Hangouts to know all of the benefits to using it over something else but to the best of my knowledge there are some things that I think people aren’t ready to deal with yet. For instance I think you have to have a Google Plus account in order to participate in a hangout (correct me if I’m wrong). Conversely, you just have to enter an email for Goto meeting or some of the other services which then does not require you to have further interaction with that company. This is opposed to Google where if you sign up for a plus account, you now have a social media profile floating around out there and not everyone wants that. Also, there are a lot of features with Goto meeting like screen sharing, annotations, etc that you don’t get with G+ (again correct me if I’m wrong). Also, you can use outside conference call numbers with other platforms instead of being locked into Google’s service where you have to have a camera and mic on your computer or you can’t participate.

I think the largest thing is that it just isn’t promoted to corporate America the same way the other online conferencing services are. I think that is (in part) because Google Plus isn’t aimed at that market. I think they are promoting it as a video chat service that Google Plus users can get access to for free and not really an enterprise class web conferencing platform.

Best,

Shawn

I think Google are a bunch of dorks who have no real concept of "cool". All of their stuff is functional but with bad interface design and a horrible user experience, with the exception of their search. It's plain, but at least it is easy to use.

I have not found one other product they have that is remotely user-friendly. Theyre nerds. Their stuff might work, but I'm not willing to invest the time in trying to figure it out.

I think people aren’t ready to deal with yet. For instance I think you have to have a Google Plus account in order to participate in a hangout .

You do need a Google Plus account to be seen but not to watch.

screen sharing, annotations, etc that you don’t get with G+ You can do this on G+

Also, you can use outside conference call numbers with other platforms instead of being locked into Google’s service where you have to have a camera and mic on your computer or you can’t participate.

I don't know what you mean here would you please clarify?

I'm trying to decide between go to webinar and google hangouts right now. I want to hold a webinar next wednesday. I'm about 75% decided on gotowebinar.

The reason is that its a known commodity. I login there, schedule a webinar date, it takes me to a page, I put i the title and a little verbiage. I save it. It gives me a link and I give that link to anyone to sign up. That's all.

I just read the "easy" way to use Google hangouts.
I go record a webinar (how?)
Upload it to Google.
Get people to sign up to my autoresponder.
Give them a redirect link (now I have to set that up).
Embed the video for the recorded webinar into a webpage.
Load a chat plugin below the youtube recording (now I have to choose one of those).
Put messages in my autoresponder reminding people to come to the webinar.
Send them to the link that redirects to my recording.
Start my play on the website (how does that timing work?)

All that, and I still don't know if they've loaded the date into their calendar, which Goto will do for them.

Just writing this out it seems like 7 times the hassle of going to GTW, scheduleing a webinar, writing a paragraph of copy, and copying a link.

Why, because some people don't want to give google more power it already has.

I love to goto webinar. Its a little costly but has way more features.

eric schmidts spying empire thanks you!

I did eventually ditch GoToWebinar, mostly because their codec is ridiculously incompatible with everything else and GTW doesn't seem to care... Oh well, too bad for them...

I did look at Google Plus hangouts as an option, the main downside for me was the way questions from the audience are delivered.

In the end I ended up at Free webinars, webinar software, webinar services - ClickWebinar and I love it so much more than GTW and my students do also. Click Webinar is a part of Implix (the GetResponse folks).

However, I do think GPlus hangouts have some value and can be used for marketing they just didn't fit exactly into my own business plan.

Cheers,
Coby

GTW is WAY expensive and WAY overpriced. I use Meeting Burner which is just as good, if not even better than GTW and every once in ahwile, they will have a sale where you can get their top tier (1,000 attendees) for only $200 per year.

I am also starting to use Google Hangouts for smaller things but for webinars, Meeting Burner has been awesome. It even integrates with Aweber.

I've had a GoToWebinar account long enough to have been grandfathered
in at their older rates

I use my GTW account every week, but I also use Google+ and
Google Hangouts. It really depends upon how many people I need
on a call, whether or not I need for it to be totally secure, how many
people need to share videos, etc.

I actually use both for just content creation, and for creating
for-sale products.

Here's a radio interview that I recently did on the topic.

You can download the MP3 of that interview and listen at your own
convenience. There is no opt-in or any of that silliness required... just
download the MP3 recording.

Willie