Did you know email was invented over 40 years ago?
Google does, and “Googlers” want you to know that too. It’s their argument for why you should adopt the latest “killer-app,” Google Wave. Combining the most powerful features of instant messaging, email and the Google suite of tools, Wave is “email rethought.” It’s a tool Google hopes is going to revolutionize the way you communicate online.
But is the revolutionary potential of this new tool enough to overcome the challenge of breaking down the traditional concept of email communication? Is Wave truly email’s Waterloo? Or, is it something that will be confined to a cult following of those developers that thrive on new technology platforms? Do we even know enough about it to hazard a guess?
Most people don’t know enough. Let’s look at a few questions regarding what Wave is, and what it does.
Wave attempts to put all these pieces into one place online, in a real-time sharing environment, instead of physically in the conference room. In our analogy, using Wave, you and your colleagues can:
-Simultaneously build a list of department heads, editing each other’s suggestions in real-time.
-Place a Google Map in the conversation and solicit suggestions from your co-workers on locations.
-Drop the YouTube video from the tourism board into the conversation.
-Send a survey from the conversation to the company asking which locations are most interesting, and watch as the responses arrive in real-time.
In short, the entire collaborative process can be completed via one Wave conversation.
The “store and forward” nature of email creates gaps, where we lose productivity. If you have users all editing the same document, only to have it usurped by another, faster user, the lost time can add up exponentially. Wave lets users trade information, edit and make suggestions in real-time, minimizing both wasted effort and server resources.
Inboxes and instant messaging windows are also very isolated entities. Except for a basic level of integration with calendars, almost anytime you move information from your inbox to twitter, a blog, or even a Word document, it requires a laborious process of cutting, pasting, clicking and formatting. In Wave, these actions are dramatically simplified, often requiring little more than two clicks.
It’s also worth noting that, forty years ago, there was no such thing as CSS or HTML and the term “rich media” wasn’t even close to being coined yet. And while email was originally intended to carry plain text messages, today we still use that same canvas, shoehorning bits of information into messages in what is often a futile, frustrating process.
Adoption: Like central air, we take email for granted. It’s become part of daily life, and because it takes minimal brain power and time to use and manage, we have been trained to forget its shortcomings. For example, would painting my roof white, installing better insulation and working to reduce global carbon emissions be better? Probably, but I have a blog post to write. Essentially, it takes time to learn new processes, and we most often don’t have enough energy or hours in the day to devote to changing our habits, no matter how beneficial these actions may be.
Chatter: Real-time communication is noisy and intense. When you’re in Wave and there are multiple conversations happening, it can become overwhelming. Google’s helping us out with their “playback” function, which is like TiVo-ing an entire conversation, but we’ll have to learn new ways of managing the information coming to us at a rapid rate. That’s scary, time-consuming and hard.
Curiously, Google is putting another barrier in the way of adoption by attempting to force a different nomenclature on Wave users. Terms such as “wave,” “blip,” “wavelets,” etc. are creating an unnecessary mental block to using the application. I know Google is trying to accommodate the different concepts behind having a conversation via Wave, but in the end, they’re all conversations, and they should be called that.
It doesn’t sound like Wave is ready for prime time quite yet. Besides early adopters, techies, and social media aficionados, who will be using it? The intensely collaborative nature of Wave will be beneficial, even now, to project managers, producers and content creators. People who spend their days working directly with media will find their conversations to be much more efficient and productive because of the way Wave integrates almost any sort of media with collaboration.
Developers are the next group that will find joy in Waving. From that perspective, Wave is a platform (as opposed to a collaboration tool). Google paid a lot of attention to making the underlying abilities of Wave accessible to programmers and making the platform extensible—in the near future, tasks such as writing a blog post, having it edited, approved and published to your company’s web site can be done within one conversation and one click. There’s a huge amount of excitement in the programming community about the potential for Wave applications.
Not anytime soon. There’s a lot of hype surrounding Wave right now, partly because invitations to use the program are so hard to get, but mainly because it’s new. While the technology behind Wave is powerful and has the potential to change some very basic behaviors, the offering hasn’t reached the level of a disruptive technology yet. Forty years of ingrained habits are hard to break, and it’s still easier to gather in a conference room rather than learn an entirely new communication tool.
What do you think about the concept of Google Wave? We encourage you to respond and tell us your thoughts!
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It some ways reminds me of a cloud version of Lotus Notes. In a corporate environment you can mandate use but on the Internet it needs to be good enough to stand on its own merits.
Its one of the evolving tools and already has made a great buzz in the industry. But it is still in preview modes and everyone looking for invites.