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I think people who think Google Wave doesn't get it will be eating their words later, much like those who thought the same thing about the iPod (most of the gee

by swombat 17y ago

I think people who think Google Wave doesn't get it will be eating their words later, much like those who thought the same thing about the iPod (most of the geek communities turned their nose up at that too). I can see instant usefulness to Wave. I have my invite, and one of my colleagues does too. I can't wait for my other cofounders to get access so that we can use it for real work. Email really just sucks in so many ways. Edit: It's worth adding that a lot of articles and pundits seem to be comparing Wave and, say, Twitter. Wave is nothing like Twitter, nor does it aim to be anything like Twitter. No, we're not going to start using Wave instead of Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, etc... because that's not what it's for! Wave might end up being useful for social communications too, but the most important pain points that it resolves are business pains, problems that people encounter when they're trying to work together remotely.

icey 17y ago
I think people are too caught up in the confusing UI. Wave is going to kill a lot of companies once it starts catching on. It may require some better front-end tools for Wave to get there, but it will happen. The way collaboration works in wave is really good; it's just a little unpolished right now.
- andrerobot 17y ago
  Yeah maybe if they dumb it down a little to be more similar to Gmail it would really catch on.
noelchurchill 17y ago
I think wave could kill twitter. The with:public option is already just like looking at the twitter stream. Wave is very open for anyone to make their own clients to use wave in whatever way they see fit. With the right client, Wave could be a much more powerful twitter.
dflock 17y ago
I think you're correct - but I think that almost everyone is missing the point and just talking about the client. The current Google supplied client is optional, and will change. What's more, other clients will emerge that do different things, are simpler, more complex or just different. You could - and I'm sure someone probably will - write email-like clients, or even IMAP-Wave gateways which enable you to use Outlook/Evolution/Whatever and participate in waves via traditional email paradigms. Clients that looks like twitter, pidgin backends (hey - it's just XMPP, this is probably already there), clients that just lifeblog everything you do into your personal life-stream wave (tsunami?) Wave is a platform. It would be pretty amazing if that platforms killer app. happened to also be the very first client anyone wrote for it. I would imagine that a lot of conversation like interactions that we now have by other means - placing orders, technical support, supply chain management, etc... will become waves, but I don't know what will be the killer app.
- dkarl 17y ago
  Unless every client is just as free-form and chaotic as Google Wave, each kind of client will have a different community and a different communications style. There's not much to get excited about until one of those yet-to-be-invented (and presumably more structured, less free-form) paradigms actually emerges and catches on.
axod 17y ago
>> "I think people who think Google Wave doesn't get it will be eating their words later, much like those who thought the same thing about the iPod (most of the geek communities turned their nose up at that too)." I'd somewhat bet the opposite. Geeks will be raving about wave and how it's realtime, XMPP federated, technically impressive etc etc, whilst the average person on the street will have no clue what it does and why they need it.
- icey 17y ago
  So the question is whether or not it remains a niche tool like RSS (which is to say only used by the technically savvy) or does it get abstracted into a transparent technology and used as a leverage tool like AJAX?
  - Teulon 17y ago
    Hasn't the point always been for 'wave' to become a transparent technology? Google has their interface, but anyone can create one or just put up a different Wave server.
  - steve19 17y ago
    I don't think RSS is a niche. What major email client does not have RSS integration? What major websites do not offer RSS feeds?
    - icey 17y ago
      I don't know about you, but the only people I know who actually use RSS are more technically advanced than 90% of the internet users I meet.
      - rooshdi 17y ago
        RSS is too complicated and constrained for the "average joe" on the street, which is why most "non-techies" I know just Google wherever they want to surf. Google speaks a language most people understand, while RSS still sounds like useless jibber jabber to these casual users.
kyro 17y ago
Can you then explain what it's for? Genuinely curious here. I consider myself relatively open minded and understanding of new web concepts, but I just don't quite get it with Wave.
- joeyo 17y ago
  I almost wonder if "Google Everything" would have been a better name for it--some aspects of just about every social website could be replaced with waves. It overlaps a lot with the functionality of Facebook, Twitter and 4chan just to name a few. It also overlaps strongly with services such as email, newsgroups and instant messaging. I don't know if wave will ultimately be compelling enough to draw people away from those other sites and services, but I don't think it will be a complete flop (I'm looking at you, VRML).
- swombat 17y ago
  Sure. Wave is for solving the key problems with email in a corporate environment: 1) It's hard to track (will presumably offer an API or be trackable by widgets) 2) It's hard to use it to collaborate on a piece of text to be sent out to someone else or included in a document (which is what it's used for half the time...) 3) When adding new people, it's hard to ensure that they have a clear view of the beginning of the conversation - often they get a garbled, over-indented mess in reverse chronological order, that's hard to follow. 4) When adding new people, often they get dropped again if someone replies to all from the wrong email. 5) It's hard to keep multiple conversation branches going. If you're collaborating with 5 people (hardly extraordinary) on a 2-page document, and they each have 1 distinct comment, and each of these comments requires a brief exchange (back and forth 3 times, let's say) before it's sorted out, you'll end up with a fairly messy conversation once it's all flattened out. 6) It's hard to attach files (particularly large or numerous files). And when you add extra people to the conversation, they don't see those files anymore. If there were multiple files sent at different time, sending all of them to the new participant is a pain in the ass. 7) When discussing, say, a document, correcting even a small typo requires a full email instead of being able to just dive in and correct the typo. There are no doubt more, but this is what I can come up with fresh out of bed.

by swombat 17y ago

icey 17y ago

I think people are too caught up in the confusing UI. Wave is going to kill a lot of companies once it starts catching on. It may require some better front-end tools for Wave to get there, but it will happen. The way collaboration works in wave is really good; it's just a little unpolished right now.

andrerobot 17y ago
Yeah maybe if they dumb it down a little to be more similar to Gmail it would really catch on.

noelchurchill 17y ago

I think wave could kill twitter. The with:public option is already just like looking at the twitter stream. Wave is very open for anyone to make their own clients to use wave in whatever way they see fit. With the right client, Wave could be a much more powerful twitter.

dflock 17y ago

I think you're correct - but I think that almost everyone is missing the point and just talking about the client. The current Google supplied client is optional, and will change. What's more, other clients will emerge that do different things, are simpler, more complex or just different. You could - and I'm sure someone probably will - write email-like clients, or even IMAP-Wave gateways which enable you to use Outlook/Evolution/Whatever and participate in waves via traditional email paradigms. Clients that looks like twitter, pidgin backends (hey - it's just XMPP, this is probably already there), clients that just lifeblog everything you do into your personal life-stream wave (tsunami?) Wave is a platform. It would be pretty amazing if that platforms killer app. happened to also be the very first client anyone wrote for it. I would imagine that a lot of conversation like interactions that we now have by other means - placing orders, technical support, supply chain management, etc... will become waves, but I don't know what will be the killer app.

dkarl 17y ago
Unless every client is just as free-form and chaotic as Google Wave, each kind of client will have a different community and a different communications style. There's not much to get excited about until one of those yet-to-be-invented (and presumably more structured, less free-form) paradigms actually emerges and catches on.

axod 17y ago

>> "I think people who think Google Wave doesn't get it will be eating their words later, much like those who thought the same thing about the iPod (most of the geek communities turned their nose up at that too)." I'd somewhat bet the opposite. Geeks will be raving about wave and how it's realtime, XMPP federated, technically impressive etc etc, whilst the average person on the street will have no clue what it does and why they need it.

icey 17y ago
So the question is whether or not it remains a niche tool like RSS (which is to say only used by the technically savvy) or does it get abstracted into a transparent technology and used as a leverage tool like AJAX?
- Teulon 17y ago
  Hasn't the point always been for 'wave' to become a transparent technology? Google has their interface, but anyone can create one or just put up a different Wave server.
- steve19 17y ago
  I don't think RSS is a niche. What major email client does not have RSS integration? What major websites do not offer RSS feeds?
  - icey 17y ago
    I don't know about you, but the only people I know who actually use RSS are more technically advanced than 90% of the internet users I meet.
    - rooshdi 17y ago
      RSS is too complicated and constrained for the "average joe" on the street, which is why most "non-techies" I know just Google wherever they want to surf. Google speaks a language most people understand, while RSS still sounds like useless jibber jabber to these casual users.

kyro 17y ago

Can you then explain what it's for? Genuinely curious here. I consider myself relatively open minded and understanding of new web concepts, but I just don't quite get it with Wave.

joeyo 17y ago
I almost wonder if "Google Everything" would have been a better name for it--some aspects of just about every social website could be replaced with waves. It overlaps a lot with the functionality of Facebook, Twitter and 4chan just to name a few. It also overlaps strongly with services such as email, newsgroups and instant messaging. I don't know if wave will ultimately be compelling enough to draw people away from those other sites and services, but I don't think it will be a complete flop (I'm looking at you, VRML).
swombat 17y ago
Sure. Wave is for solving the key problems with email in a corporate environment: 1) It's hard to track (will presumably offer an API or be trackable by widgets) 2) It's hard to use it to collaborate on a piece of text to be sent out to someone else or included in a document (which is what it's used for half the time...) 3) When adding new people, it's hard to ensure that they have a clear view of the beginning of the conversation - often they get a garbled, over-indented mess in reverse chronological order, that's hard to follow. 4) When adding new people, often they get dropped again if someone replies to all from the wrong email. 5) It's hard to keep multiple conversation branches going. If you're collaborating with 5 people (hardly extraordinary) on a 2-page document, and they each have 1 distinct comment, and each of these comments requires a brief exchange (back and forth 3 times, let's say) before it's sorted out, you'll end up with a fairly messy conversation once it's all flattened out. 6) It's hard to attach files (particularly large or numerous files). And when you add extra people to the conversation, they don't see those files anymore. If there were multiple files sent at different time, sending all of them to the new participant is a pain in the ass. 7) When discussing, say, a document, correcting even a small typo requires a full email instead of being able to just dive in and correct the typo. There are no doubt more, but this is what I can come up with fresh out of bed.