Google+ Hangouts Cameraman Lets You Control Who’s Visible in the Stream

Google's Hangouts has been the standout feature in Google+, perhaps the only one. It's the one thing that Google+ can do better than anyone, in fact, it's the one thing that others can't do at all. One cool thing about Google+ Hangouts is the On Air feature which enables basically anyone to stream a group get-together to the world.

The On Air feature has been adopted by companies, politicians, celebrities, like Barack Obama or the Dalai Lama and so on as a way of getting together with fans and engaging with their audience (customers) within the limitations of Hangouts, i.e. the maximum limit of 10 participants.

Now, Google is giving those users more control over their streams with the Cameraman app. As the name suggests, it's a way of controlling the Hangout stream, specifically who gets to be seen, on the "big" screen or the thumbnail-sized ones.

"To help you create even more professional broadcasts, we’re launching a new app called Cameraman. This app lets you control when specific guests appear to your viewers, so you can introduce someone before they appear in your live broadcast, or hide someone after you've interviewed them," Google's Matthew Leske wrote.

"Since we launched Hangouts On Air in May, we've seen some amazing live broadcasts like Everest climbers live from Base Camp (http://goo.gl/pZMS2), and The New York Times Healthcare Reform discussion (http://goo.gl/Jauvn)," he boasted.

The feature is simple enough to use in practice, you can simply click on the "mute video" button to hide the stream from that participant. You can also configure Hangouts to have everyone hidden by default until you manually "unmute" them. Cameraman is already available along with the other standard Hangout apps, like Screenshare or Google Effects.