A lot has changed in the months since Google unleashed the Wave preview to the masses… It seems to me that something that was first met with unparalleled excitement from the community has now been kind of forgotten. The uber geeks I know who were selling their souls on Twitter in attempt to unearth a beta invite haven’t logged in for months. Heck, even Google has redirected their marketing machines to focus on Buzz.
To top it all off, I still can’t adequately explain Wave to my parents.
That last point may be the core issue with Wave… It’s a very cool piece of technology that I just can’t find a need for in my geeky every day life (and that’s saying something). In fact, I haven’t talked to another person in my field that is actually using Wave on a regular basis for anything important. I guess the question is, “What could Google change to make Wave useful?”
Make it the De-facto Tool for Live, Unified Comments
The first time I heard of Wave, this is exactly what I wanted from it: An embeddable conversation stream that would be live and editable via our website, Facebook, email, etc. This sort of functionality has long been my “holy grail,” as it’s something that would fix a big hole in the way our ministries communicate online. I want our users to be able to join in on a single conversation using whatever tool or service that they’re the most comfortable in. It drives me crazy to see separate conversations and redundant questions between Facebook, Twitter, blogs and our full website. This sort of functionality alone would make Wave tremendously relevant to me.
Clean up the Interface
I can’t harp on Wave too much for this one (as it’s not even officially a beta yet), but I just find the interface to be confusing. A little UI work would go a long way toward helping their audience understand its functionality and possibilities.
Just Integrate it into Gmail
Even though I’ve been unimpressed with Buzz so far, I don’t really mind trying it out and having it around as part of my A+ experience with Gmail. It’s kind of the same direction I’m hoping they take with Wave in the future; I don’t want it to replace my email inbox (at this point at least), but I’d love to have it around for project collaboration and following comment threads from the sites I frequent. It would cement Gmail’s position as the app I always have running, and give them a lot more opportunity to put adwords in front of my eyeballs.
So what do you guys think? Am I totally off-base and missing the point? Has Wave completely altered the way you communicate online? Let us know in the comments below.
Google certainly has something interesting with Wave and with Google Voice as well, but both services seem darn near impossible to market because you can’t really explain how it works or what it does without getting an account and just trying to use it. Maybe Google Buzz won’t suffer from the same problem, but if so it’s only because Twitter and Facebook have already trained people how to be able to use a service like Buzz.
Personally, I just turned off Buzz and what little experience I’ve had with Wave has been the source of much “meh”.
I have one good Wave I’ve participated in and aside from the very confusing UI you referenced, it was a pretty good experience. The only thing that I really, really hate about it is having to log into Wave - I missed out on days of communication in that wave because I didn’t know any communication was happening. It was only days later that I logged in and saw that there had been replies I didn’t know about.
I know a lot of people use gmail in the web interface, and for those people Wave is probably a more natural fit. But just as I use twitter all the time but NEVER go to twitter.com, I use gmail all the time but NEVER go to gmail.com. For both I use apps on the computer (echofon & apple mail) and the iPhone (tweetie & mail).
If I could use Wave instead of email — with the same ease and multiple access points (phone, desktop app, etc) then I would use it more. But I don’t want one more thing I have to remember to log into and check. That’s why I disabled Buzz, and why Wave will remain firmly at the bottom of my priority list.
I think Googles thinking of Wave as a standard to replace email in businesses.
which means it isn’t going to revolutionize anything for several years. the people that use wave for projects love it, from what I hear. but I don’t think anyone at Google has delusions that ppl will switch from Gmail in any small amount of time.
also, re: Mail and Tweetie… Wave IS a protocol. so the apps just have to be developed. right now it seems everyones waiting for Google to finish more of the functionality and publish the docs. it’s gonna be awhile.