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Wave, for all it's novelty, interesting parts and hints of genius ... was simply a terrible product. It's I think the prototypical example of over-thinking, ov

Wave, for all it's novelty, interesting parts and hints of genius ... was simply a terrible product. It's I think the prototypical example of over-thinking, over-engineering. Most successful things are essentially simple. Slack is embarrassingly simple. ... it's simple, and getting quality, end-to-ed experience, and getting 'the small things' right, and maybe being great at some things while forgoing others, i.e. 'having an opinion' or 'focusing on a segment'. I remember not being able to explain wave to anyone ...

chiefalchemist 8y ago
Well, we obviously can't debate the difference in success of these two products. That's in stone. But in terms of usefulness and delivering something that is truly useful and enabling of collaboration? Then in the Wave v Slack battle, Wave wins. Being able to describe Slack, doesn't mean it's useful. (Note: I'm not saying that simple doesn't help with traction. It does. I'm putting the actual products toe to toe.) Don't get me wrong. Slack is great (if your alternative is email) but it's not the end in that space; at least I hope not. If you were to sit down and ask, "What if...What would a next Slack look like?" you'd likely end up with something close to Wave. Today? What is Wave? It's all the things you wish Slack was ;)
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  I think that the success of Slack fairy strongly validates it as being 'more useful' than Wave. Google has the brand power to get as many people as they want using something, and it's free - and people chose not to use it. Conversely, slack was a tiny startup with no marketing budget, to start, and people are actually paying $ for Slack - so that means a lot.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    More people use =/= more useful. More and more we read about people / teams de-Slacking. why? Because it's just not delivering the value they need. It's effective __ but only to a point__, and then it becomes the bottleneck. Yes, it's a great screwdriver, provided you don't need a hammer. I'm not disputing Slack is a more mass market product - just like USA Today is not The Economist. Wave was a new, different, and I'm maintaining arguably better way to look at team comms / collaboration / building a knowledge graph. Let's not confuse Google's cluster-fucking the execution of the rollout + marketing with the value of the idea itself. Google had the power, yes. But they botches the beta. The sad thing, they did the same for G+. That is, they didn't learn from Wave.
keyle 8y ago
One could argue that Wave would have eventually ended up as 'simple' as Slack, if they had persevered. That said, Wave beta was a mess of "uh? aha... mmm?"

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Well, we obviously can't debate the difference in success of these two products. That's in stone. But in terms of usefulness and delivering something that is truly useful and enabling of collaboration? Then in the Wave v Slack battle, Wave wins. Being able to describe Slack, doesn't mean it's useful. (Note: I'm not saying that simple doesn't help with traction. It does. I'm putting the actual products toe to toe.) Don't get me wrong. Slack is great (if your alternative is email) but it's not the end in that space; at least I hope not. If you were to sit down and ask, "What if...What would a next Slack look like?" you'd likely end up with something close to Wave. Today? What is Wave? It's all the things you wish Slack was ;)

sonnyblarney 8y ago
I think that the success of Slack fairy strongly validates it as being 'more useful' than Wave. Google has the brand power to get as many people as they want using something, and it's free - and people chose not to use it. Conversely, slack was a tiny startup with no marketing budget, to start, and people are actually paying $ for Slack - so that means a lot.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  More people use =/= more useful. More and more we read about people / teams de-Slacking. why? Because it's just not delivering the value they need. It's effective __ but only to a point__, and then it becomes the bottleneck. Yes, it's a great screwdriver, provided you don't need a hammer. I'm not disputing Slack is a more mass market product - just like USA Today is not The Economist. Wave was a new, different, and I'm maintaining arguably better way to look at team comms / collaboration / building a knowledge graph. Let's not confuse Google's cluster-fucking the execution of the rollout + marketing with the value of the idea itself. Google had the power, yes. But they botches the beta. The sad thing, they did the same for G+. That is, they didn't learn from Wave.

keyle 8y ago

One could argue that Wave would have eventually ended up as 'simple' as Slack, if they had persevered. That said, Wave beta was a mess of "uh? aha... mmm?"