Have the follow SDMB geeks taken a gander at Google Wave yet? It looks really amazing to me, a total reconcepting of communication on the web. I see it being broadly adopted in businesses and might even be a Twitter, Facebook, Evite, blog and…gasp…email killer. The potential extensibility of the product and it’s residence on the internet and access via browser as opposed to a desktop email client could really change the way we do things.
Now, I realize it’s ambitious and I might be overselling it because I just watched the YouTube clip of the Live Demo, but I’m pretty eager to get my hands on it.
I’ve not been interested in Twitter, barely check my Facebook page and my email communications have slowed considerably these days but Google Wave looks like it takes the best parts of all these things and grows the transportability of them while trimming away all the noise and fluff that Twitter and Facebook generate. I can’t imagine why a business wouldn’t love this thing’s ability to plan and corroborate in real time without becoming the fragmented and multi-threaded mess that emails tend towards. It seems like a massive improvement on event planning and quasi-blogging (and compliments traditional blogging).
Anyways, how many of you have checked it out? Here’s a article that attempts to summarize what it does and what it could eventually do. I think watching the first 18 minutes of the previously linked YouTube Demo is a better way to become acclimated with it. If you hang on until the end the Rosy Robot is really amazing!
Ok, I’m posting after having watched 5 or 6 minutes [of an hour and a half vid] and I love it. It’s a bit much for my purposes, but for the plugged-in folks, it’s really cool.
Fascinating and kind of scary. I can see this *replacing *email, instant messaging, message boards, social networking sites, photo sharing sites … pretty much every way we currently have for interacting with other people online.
My only question is “How will they pay for the bandwidth?” Is it going to be ad driven?
It looks like a painful ‘look at MEEEEE!!!’ attention-grabbing attempt. I really don’t get what it can offer to people beyond those who are part of the miniscule minority already using Twitter et al.
Wow. Really, 30 is going to be the new 50 in five years in terms of keeping up with technical developments, I feel like I could actually be left behind by all the new stuff. Feels like yesterday that I made fun of my dad for not grokking email email… :eek:
I should probably start shopping for chequered trousers to pull up to my armpits.
And don’t get me started on the music the kids listen to these days…
It consolidates the activities of perhaps a dozen different important business and social applications. In an office environment it merges the functionality of a email client/server, MS Project, office intranet, shared folders, instant messaging and creates a new distribution and alert functionality. They fact that all the data is real-time and un-duplicated (consolidated, unified and codified) makes office organization pretty seamless and painless.
In the social world it essentially does everything that Evite, Facebook, Blogger, LiveJournal, AIM, email, Picasa, Twitter and god knows what else (remember, this isn’t even in Beta yet and it’s Open Source) does. Not a single one of those applications is even remotely “niche” these days.
I worked for the President during the campaign. We used Google’s Documents and applications exclusively because of how well they work, and their collaborative nature. We got an email from Google, saying that the biggest Google Document ever created was the one created for the North Carolina team. Currently, in my job (field organizer for an environmental group), we use Google Documents because we all used them during the Obama campaign and appreciate what Google has done so far.
I think that if you’re looking at this software and saying that it won’t deliver, you don’t get it. Google’s open source and collaborative efforts are amazing and I’ve used them time and time again and never been disappointed. My only concern are privacy issues, but judging from the caliber of people that have used them and the amount that Google currently holds, they’re trustworthy. These tools that they have and that they’re silently acquiring over the years have been acquired for a reason. Most companies look to 3rd quarter of 2009. Google looks at 2015.
I haven’t seen the entire video through yet, but I will, and if something poignant comes up, I’ll add to this thread.
Yeah, it has the potential to fundamentally alter almost every online social interaction most of us currently have … this message board included.
Imagine the Straight Dope, but with every thread taking place as a real-time chat. Where core topics can spin off into priviate discussions that can then be seamlessly folded back into the public threads. Where forwarding an interesting post is as simple as dragging someone’s name into a header.
Yeah, the biggest risk I see is that folding so many different social interactions together might make it hard to compartmentalize your life. If Google Wave became my single point of email, IMing and social networking ala Facebook I might have too many new messages in one folder every day. Of course I imagine this aspect is something they’ve thought of.
Yeah, that’s kinda my main concern – seems it’d be awfully easy to loose the overview, with everyone talking to everyone everywhere all the time. And I hope they’ve got good defences against spambots, it would be really awkward if that presentation you worked on with your colleagues till late in the night suddenly switched to a Viagra ad…
Twitter et al would have to include its 2 biggest competitors, Myspace and Facebook, which off the top of my head are well over 100 million each by conservative estimates, and that’s not to even mention the myriad of other similar sites that have millions of users.
But, on the topic: at the risk of sounding clueless, I really don’t get what’s the big deal about Wave. It seems more like an improvement on a bunch of stuff that already exists rather than something totally new.
I don’t really see the big deal. Looks like a kind of AIM/email/Facebook hybrid? Why would I want someone to watch me typing? I’m only 23, but this makes me feel old and confused. I can see this being popular with the more tech-savvy demographic, but I don’t think it will be embraced like Twitter/Facebook/Myspace. Or the telephone… usually the easiest way to contact someone, I have found.
