4 ms·

Wave was too ahead of its time. Bots in channels that could translate and issue arbitrary actions? In 2009? Nonsense.

wlesieutre 10y ago
I really liked Wave. It came out when I was in college and moving into an off-campus apartment with two other guys. We used it to coordinate who was bringing what (to not end up with 50 pots and three sets of chairs), and being able to have reply threads in the middle of a previous post was a great format for that sort of small group discussion.
abz10 10y ago
It was not ahead of its time, it was poorly executed. People didn't know what to make of it. That is the designers fault. They needed to relate it to existing ideas and beat those ideas at their own game, even if that mean restricting what it can do to familiar domains. Then over time they can evolve it while taking the users along with them. Instead people bounced off it and decided to wait it out to see if they really needed it and it turns out they didn't. Spereately, I think it's hilarious that many websites pester hard for emails, making them effectively pamphlets for their email content. If only there was a way that I could subscribe (and unsubscribe) to a stream of short notifications from content creators and be confident that I see all of them in a timeline order. Like what Twitter used to be before they screwed with the timeline. They're going to lose to email, and not for being ahead of their time.
- chimeracoder 10y ago
  > It was not ahead of its time, it was poorly executed. People didn't know what to make of it. Eh, the biggest problem with using Wave was that it was only just barely usable on top-tier hardware of the time. So, for most people, it was impossible to run on their own hardware (especially on their laptops). I think that if the performance hadn't been an issue (ie, the average hardware in 2009 had been capable of what it is in 2016), it could actually have been comparably successful to Google Docs or Google Calendar.
  - abz10 10y ago
    The ideas behind Google Wave are very very old, like Lotus Notes old. I worked on plugins Lotus Notes to do all sorts of Google Wave stuff. There is nothing new there. These ideas pop up on a regular basis and fail for the same reasons. My plugin took a week of training by very motivated users and they still struggled with all of the freedom. It was domain specialized, which helps, and all these years later it is still in use and they love it. Google Docs and Google Calendar are very restricted in comparison. Gmail is as well. And search - type some words get an ordered list. If you don't get what you want try some different words. Pretty damn simple to use and explain.
    - chimeracoder 10y ago
      > The ideas behind Google Wave are very very old, like Lotus Notes old. The ideas behind Slack are very old. Doesn't stop Slack from being incredibly valuable as both a product and a company. In many ways, Slack is trying to become what Google Wave tried to be at the beginning (a tool for real-time communication with, not just in chat/text form, but with other embedded forms of media as well).
      - abz10 10y ago
        Lotus Notes was very successful. They were acquired for $3.5B in 1995, long before our current bubble economy. It's likely Slack will progress along the same path - except it will be much faster now. If they don't sell out soon enough they will ride it into the ground and a new fad will take over. Remember Yammer? I don't see Slack as being different to the others. They don't have the talent or motivation to fix their core issues (Facebook does). Bots are not a panacea. Anecdotally I've noticed lots of people have already abandoned Slack because it is distracting and doesn't provide enough value. I expect this to continue. Busy people with jobs and lives will be the first to go and it'll be left with the annoying people with nothing better to do, kinda like Twitter. I think Facebook can and will eventually do a better Slack than Slack.
pkamb 10y ago
I imagined a "gmail inbox", but with each "email" instead being an arbitrary widget. So you'd share a spreadsheet via "email", but it's not an attachment... it's an actual spreadsheet being shared. I was less excited when I found Wave was its own product, rather than a Gmail integration. Putting the widgets inside the same email inbox you have open for hours each day would be the best way to get people to actually use it.
freehunter 10y ago
Wave was Slack before Slack existed.
pjc50 10y ago
Aren't bots in channels a 1990s IRC feature?
Keyframe 10y ago
Wave was actually rather great for groupware-like work on textual documents.

I really liked Wave. It came out when I was in college and moving into an off-campus apartment with two other guys. We used it to coordinate who was bringing what (to not end up with 50 pots and three sets of chairs), and being able to have reply threads in the middle of a previous post was a great format for that sort of small group discussion.

abz10 10y ago

It was not ahead of its time, it was poorly executed. People didn't know what to make of it. That is the designers fault. They needed to relate it to existing ideas and beat those ideas at their own game, even if that mean restricting what it can do to familiar domains. Then over time they can evolve it while taking the users along with them. Instead people bounced off it and decided to wait it out to see if they really needed it and it turns out they didn't. Spereately, I think it's hilarious that many websites pester hard for emails, making them effectively pamphlets for their email content. If only there was a way that I could subscribe (and unsubscribe) to a stream of short notifications from content creators and be confident that I see all of them in a timeline order. Like what Twitter used to be before they screwed with the timeline. They're going to lose to email, and not for being ahead of their time.

chimeracoder 10y ago
> It was not ahead of its time, it was poorly executed. People didn't know what to make of it. Eh, the biggest problem with using Wave was that it was only just barely usable on top-tier hardware of the time. So, for most people, it was impossible to run on their own hardware (especially on their laptops). I think that if the performance hadn't been an issue (ie, the average hardware in 2009 had been capable of what it is in 2016), it could actually have been comparably successful to Google Docs or Google Calendar.
- abz10 10y ago
  The ideas behind Google Wave are very very old, like Lotus Notes old. I worked on plugins Lotus Notes to do all sorts of Google Wave stuff. There is nothing new there. These ideas pop up on a regular basis and fail for the same reasons. My plugin took a week of training by very motivated users and they still struggled with all of the freedom. It was domain specialized, which helps, and all these years later it is still in use and they love it. Google Docs and Google Calendar are very restricted in comparison. Gmail is as well. And search - type some words get an ordered list. If you don't get what you want try some different words. Pretty damn simple to use and explain.
  - chimeracoder 10y ago
    > The ideas behind Google Wave are very very old, like Lotus Notes old. The ideas behind Slack are very old. Doesn't stop Slack from being incredibly valuable as both a product and a company. In many ways, Slack is trying to become what Google Wave tried to be at the beginning (a tool for real-time communication with, not just in chat/text form, but with other embedded forms of media as well).
    - abz10 10y ago
      Lotus Notes was very successful. They were acquired for $3.5B in 1995, long before our current bubble economy. It's likely Slack will progress along the same path - except it will be much faster now. If they don't sell out soon enough they will ride it into the ground and a new fad will take over. Remember Yammer? I don't see Slack as being different to the others. They don't have the talent or motivation to fix their core issues (Facebook does). Bots are not a panacea. Anecdotally I've noticed lots of people have already abandoned Slack because it is distracting and doesn't provide enough value. I expect this to continue. Busy people with jobs and lives will be the first to go and it'll be left with the annoying people with nothing better to do, kinda like Twitter. I think Facebook can and will eventually do a better Slack than Slack.

pkamb 10y ago

I imagined a "gmail inbox", but with each "email" instead being an arbitrary widget. So you'd share a spreadsheet via "email", but it's not an attachment... it's an actual spreadsheet being shared. I was less excited when I found Wave was its own product, rather than a Gmail integration. Putting the widgets inside the same email inbox you have open for hours each day would be the best way to get people to actually use it.

freehunter 10y ago

Wave was Slack before Slack existed.

pjc50 10y ago

Aren't bots in channels a 1990s IRC feature?

Keyframe 10y ago

Wave was actually rather great for groupware-like work on textual documents.