I'm shutting down Google+ for the night and quite possibly for the weekend. Why? This stupid #gifwars thing people are so proud of. This Adam Black guy said he doesn't like gifs and now everyone is mass trolling him. Having been mass trolled like this I can relate to him easily enough. Have an opinion and the collective might of Google+'s lower class denizens jump on a bandwagon. I just saw a post where someone wanted to jump on board and had to get clarification she was tagging the proper Adam Black. She wasn't even connected to him ! Nor was she a part of the original discussion. She just wanted to follow the herd. When I called her out of it she claimed, "one gif doesn't make a troll." Perhaps not, but she's contributing to a larger troll effort. One straw doesn't break the camel's back, but thousands will. So, tonight, Google+ disgusts me. It probably will tomorrow as well. And possibly Sunday. I gave up Google+ for two months this spring
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It's basically Twitch.tv (which Amazon bought), but built on the YouTube platform (with it's billions and billions of ready-made views).
Subscribe to a channel, and you'll get a notification as soon as they start a live stream. This will be useful to me and some other people I know - even though I'm a Fulltime RV Dweller, and not a gamer. We host periodic Hangouts on Air, and right now the only way to let the people who enjoy watching them know is to schedule a Google Event ahead of time - but even then, you can't invite your whole subscriber base to the event, you can only send an invite people that you have circled. Having your ALL your subscribers automatically notified that you've gone live will be a tremendous boon. Right now, those of us that have 1500-20,000 subscribers will see maybe 20 people show up to scheduled weekly Hangouts on Air. In addition, We’re also creating single link you can share for all your streams. will be massively helpful, since there will only be one URL that subscribers would use to tune in.
It'll take a while for non-gamers to figure out how to bend the tech to their desires, but it'll happen, and it'll be good for the internet ecosystem.
When people want to know something (GTA V Reviews, The Witcher 3 Walkthrough "quest name", "How to replace spark plugs BMW R1100RS") etc, they go to Google. YouTube is Google - so with the launch of gaming.YouTube.com, as streamers migrate from Twitch.TV (or as they start to stream to both, somehow), that content will become infinitely more 'googleable'. The streams (and streamers) will show up in Google results, which will increase the discoverability of entertaining content, which will increase view counts.
There are already a handful of fulltime RVers who are generating enough AdSense revenue from their YouTube Videos that "YouTubing" is their job description, and those people have only 20k-ish subscribers, in a very, very niche interest.
If they can set up gaming.youtube.com so that gamers/streamers can monetize with AdSense, parents around the world will have to eat some "You can't make a living playing games, Billy (Hans, Yuki, Karen)!" crow.