Longest Running Google Plus Hangout Marathon and It’s Still Going After 27 Days!!


We have covered in detail about google plus hangout in an earliest post. In this post we’ll talk about a hangout that’s been going around for about 27 days now.

One of the cool and unique feature that came with Google+ was the hangout (Video group chat). While other services like Skype charged for it, google launched this feature absolutely free of cost.

Like all crazy things that happen on the internet (like youtube sensation) some are intentional and some are accidental. This longest running google plus marathon was started as a fun and it keeps going. The way  hangout works is, anybody on google plus can start an hangout and others in the circle will be notified and will be able to  join the hangout with click of a button. There is a maximum limit of 10 persons at a time.

It all started when Mark Olsen of FamilyLink thought of going on a marathon hangout and since then it keeps going on and on. As the news about this spread it became quite popular. They new even started to stream it live on UStream, created a website on its own to broadcast it live. They kind of mimic’ing one of the requested feature for Hangouts i.e Watch hangout as spectators – people who are not interested in participating but want to see what’s going on. Now through their website you can even join the hangout to participate or just listen what others are talking about.

Some of the interesting facts about this marathon hangout

  • Google engineers are participating in these hangouts
  • Google provides support to keep the hangout running by allowing up to 15 minutes interval between rejoining the hangout
  • On the average of about 30 people arrive every hour
  • It is estimated around 12,000 people have participated so far
  • There is no sign of this ending as long as people are joining and leaving (Looks like google is interested in knowing how hangouts can be taken to the next level and they fully support this, kudos to Google – that’s what innovation all about)

Marathon hangout was a simple idea that has gone wild!!!.

2 Comments

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  1. Juli Brown

    Hi Rafiq! I’m new to G+, bear with me please. Are visitors able to visit their Hangout & if so, the hangout’s name please. 

    My initial reason for ending up on this site, & a VERY informative site it is, thank you – is that I was G-Searching the size of Google’s servers. Their pages  simply will NOT load for me now, since G+ & I’m on a fairly new computer, 2009. 

    My lay-person suspicion is they are bombarded by the high traffic recently. Please let us know what you think the reason might be. Thanks! Juli Brown 😉

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