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Namesake Chill Gets Competitor: Google+

In a demonstration of how difficult it is to differentiate yourself in the world of online, social web services, Los Angeles-based Namesake, the social conversations startup headed by Brian Norgard and Dan Gould, has a new competitor for its Chill synchronized video-and-discussion project: Google+. Namesake just launched Chill, a web-based app for Facebook which allows users to launch a synchronized video and discuss it, real time, with friends, at the beginning of the month, allowing users to watch and comment on videos in real time. Yesterday, Google rolled out a new feature in Google+, its new social networking service, which allows users to invite others to watch synchronized YouTube videos together in a Google+ hangout. Google+ hangouts are a video-based, live video conferencing feature of the new Google social networking service. Namesake's Chill works on Facebook and Twitter, and is text-based; Google's YouTube synchronized videos on Google+ are video chat based.