Google interns Anthony Tordillos and Mairin Chesney have announced a brand new feature on Hangouts platform that they worked on.

They have added support for private chats on the Google+ Hangouts platform. This comes handy at times when you are in a hangout with multiple people but want to communicate privately with individuals.

They talked about how to use this new functionality:

Now you don’t have to pass secret notes under the desk. If you’re in a Hangout with a group of people, but you want to make a comment to just one of them, simply type “/to [their name] [your message]”. You don’t need to type their full name, just enough so that it’s not ambiguous who you mean. Type “/users” to see the nicknames you can use for each person in the Hangout. We also made it easy for you to reply. Click the Reply link on a private message and go!

This functionality seems to be inspired by the IRC clients which is pretty cool!