New Google Video Endeavor May Prove Successful
November 16, 2013
Google has had a stream of unsuccessful projects, but All Things D tells us about how “Google Launches Helpouts, A Live Video Tutorial Service” that is a great idea and it is surprising no one has done it before. Helpouts is a new service that offers users the ability to view live video tutorials, instructions, and services via the Hangouts streaming video platform.
Other Web sites have already tried conquering the helping market, such as eHow.com, but the instructions often lack a personal touch and usually only publish content that has been copied and pasted. Helpouts could fill a gap where people get the personal help touch that the Internet lacks. Helpouts is not a free service, people will pay for the information with a flat fee or a per minute rate. Google will take 20% of the total, though.
The downside:
“It’s easy to pick holes in Google’s Helpouts pitch right off the bat. Though the company assures that it vets all of its partners and instructor participants, that’s hardly a scalable solution, over time — the tackling of which Manber wouldn’t elaborate upon. And you’re basically required to be locked into the Google-verse to use Helpouts; the service requires you have a Google+ account and, for now, an active Google Wallet account.”
YouTube also exists with its own free instructional videos. Google hopes that more than people needing everyday help will use the service. The company wants professional developers and even company brands to use it as a way to network and target consumers.
Will it work? It might. It probably will have its series of success and failures, but the biggest downfall is that people will have to pay for the content. Google needs to make the content better and original to get people to cough up the bucks.
Whitney Grace, November 16, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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