Well, even though many if not most of my friends ended up with an invite (and we made active use of Wave), that didn't make it a success: the client was just to

Well, even though many if not most of my friends ended up with an invite (and we made active use of Wave), that didn't make it a success: the client was just too slow and laggy. It basically only worked in chrome, and poorly there. Large threads were simply unusable. I don't think the closed beta-ness of wave really hurt it. If wave had actually worked well, then maybe there'd have been a point where it was worth opening up to many users - but wave never got there, so it's a moot point.