The Hangout acts pretty much like an IRC channel, usually, there's only typing going on and no talking. It's a shame though that we can only get a max of 10 people into the hangout.
The hangouts could complement the IRC - they could be the place where people who want to stream work without using Twitch could go to share stuff. And the IRC could be used to coordinate multiple hangouts too. Really do wish the Hangouts would allow no limit to chat connections though. Would be cool there was like maybe…