First Google Wave impressions
I was first quite excited when a friend of mine told my that he has invited me to Google Wave. I immediately went to my inbox just to learn that there is no invite - after a 10 day frustrating wait the invite finally arrived (more about the reason for the delay see link below). Finally on the big day when I was able to login to Google Wave first time I was quite disappointed. The revolution of Google Wave is not in providing amazing content, it's just simply a collaboration platform with a twist. It's not going to be a Facebook killer - at least for the next few years. Google Wave is not a mainstream product - it's designed for advanced collaboration for people who are very used to working using online tools (typically IT professionals). It's key challenge is that it offers too much choice and freedom - you need to think how you want to use it. This simply means that it's not going to be a mainstream consumer product very quickly. Unless it completely transforms how people interact - which is possible.
I do not like seeing when people type: First it's funny, then it's hilarious and in the end it's boring. This will be turned off at some point since it takes the focus off from the actual sentence - you will start looking how someone types - that's not the point, the key thing is to understand what the other person is trying to say. One thing I do agree with Google Wave developers: email is dead - the future is for social networks and collaboration. That's for sure. Don't get me completely wrong - I think Google Wave is great and offers exciting possibilities as an advanced collaboration platform. However as I have helped to launch one collaboration platform myself years ago (FLE project see link below) I know that if you require users to go through paradigm shifts your platform is not going to be successful easily or quickly - at least by a mainstream audience. And I believe this is the challenge Google Wave is going to face - of course as it is created by Google there will be millions of people trying it and it will evolve quickly and it will find its' market - however I do not believe it will kill Facebook or IM. IM is becoming more network agnostic functionality anyway - soon it does not matter which network you are on and you can IM with anyone (except with Skype because they think they own the world). However there is one market which would be ready for something like this. I think Google Wave will find lot's of audience from the education sector: universities, schools and other educational projects will find this tool extremely useful. This is where it's advanced features will be useful. I think Google Wave is going to be a great learning platform with the potential of transforming the entire education system. Each lesson can be a wave and you can see how the learning happens through the playback feature later on - very cool and useful. You can embed videos, pictures and multimedia - just what a modern education system needs. This linked with a smart room that converts your speech into text and projects the entire discussion on the wall - wow a tru killer app for the education sector! Very exciting indeed. Well it is going to be very interesting to see where this leads. Hopefully Google Wave increases learning across the world. That would be a great thing indeed. Why do you have to wait for your invite:http://jessenewhart.com/google/why-you-havent-got-you-google-wave-invite-yet/ Overview of Google Wave:
FLE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fle3
