Everyone, in the social media world at least, is getting in a state about Google Wave. Although the invitations are a little more forthcoming now, the programme is still in preview, not even beta, but listening to people, it’s the future of computing.
I’m old enough to remember a whole load of next best things come and go. A few years ago Second Life was going to take over the Internet. major corporations such as IBM were setting up on it and it was creating its first millionaires. We were all waiting for take off, and…well nothing happened. Early trailblazers LiveJournal started as early as 1999 and possibly contributed to the early reputation of bloggers as being spotty thirteen-year olds wondering why they didn’t have a boyfriend. The site went from strength to strength, failed to set the world on fire. After going through a variety of owners, it has recently been bought by a Russian company that had been licensing it in its local market.
I’ve been on Twitter for three months and had some really good results including a pretty good and interesting job. The founders will be adding premium business accounts soon and it is starting to be indexed in search engines. The odds are that it won’t be a flash in the pan, but who knows?
Google is currently sweeping all before it, starting as a search engine with a goal of “indexing the world’s information” and Google Docs is making an attempt to take over shared working, but isn’t the Google love-in going a little far here?
Google Wave is currently a marketing phenomenon. By limiting the number of “invites” it sends out it is creating a desire, a buzz, a want. But lets face it, those lucky enough to be invited are nothing more than glorified beta-testers for a product that isn’t even in beta! I’ve spoken to a number of IT pros in recent weeks who are enthusiastic about it, they tell me that it’s going to change the way we work (or collaborate, to use Googlespeak), but no-one can tell me how. The main reason for this is that so few people are using it that they haven’t got anyone to share or “collaborate” with. An application waiting for a purpose? Methinks so.
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