Early lessons in using Google+ Hangouts for interviews

Steve Buttry, who ought to get royalties from this blog because I quote him so much, had a fascinating post last week about using Google+ Hangouts for interviews.

He asked people at the various properties of Digital First Media, where he’s the director of community engagement and social media, to provide some examples of how they’ve used Google+ in their newsrooms.

Reporters and editors from the Oakland Press and Macomb Daily in Michigan and the Trentonian in New Jersey chimed in with examples of how they’d used the video chat room for interviewing or other newsgathering purposes.

As Joe D’Aquila of the Trentonian points out, Google+ has a ways to go before its technically up to what media organizations are likely to use it for. He provides a long play-by-play of his attempts to work around the lack of live-streaming capability in Google+ Hangouts, which, barring workarounds, means only people in the Hangout can watch it.

But Google says those improvements are coming.

Have you used Google+ Hangouts in your work yet? Do you have any ideas for you might use it?