Aug 5, 2010
Maybe it was just ahead of its time. Or maybe there were just too many features to ever allow it to be defined properly, but Google is saying today that they are going to stop any further development of Google Wave.
Wave, a real time messaging platform, was unveiled in May 2009 to an enthusiastic crowd of developers at the Google I/O event in San Francisco. It would “set a new benchmark for interactivity,” said Sergey Brin.
The product is part email, part Twitter and part instant messaging. Users can drag files from the desktop to a discussion. Wave even showed character-by-character live typing. It fully launched this last May.
And while the service has many, or at least some, passionate users (including TechCrunchers), it “has not seen the user adoption we would have liked,” says Google.
Oct 30, 2009
There is a lot of hype surrounding the real-time web, and much of the feeding frenzy reminds me of the RSS space four years ago — though there is a lot of potential, there is also a lot of noise. How do you navigate through it all and which developments should you be paying attention to? What are the emerging trends for companies and entrepreneurs to watch for? Here are four real-time web trends that I’m tracking.
Gina Trapani
Oct 15, 2009
Google Wave is a new communication tool that the search giant bills as "what email would look like if it were invented today." While the plan to modernize email is laudable and ambitious, Google Wave's whiz-bang features can feel confusing and chaotic to new users. However, if regular people can make the leap that Wave does from email's message-based system to conversations as co-editing a single document, Wave could revolutionize the way we communicate and collaborate online.
Oct 10, 2009
Over the past week Google has been rolling out the first invitations to its latest service, a complex "real-time communication and collaboration" system dubbed Google Wave.
Instead of sending messages back and forth, users create web-page-like documents called waves that others can modify or comment on, using a combination of features more usually seen separately in email, wikis, instant messaging and social networking (see a video introducing Wave).
Early reviews have been positive, and demand for invitations outstrips supply (Google says ours is still on the way). But even for those who have tried and liked it, Wave's potential is still hard to assess. The problem is that most talk about it is focussed on technology, not people.
Oct 7, 2009
Google has quietly been launching a social network right under our own chins. No, it’s not about Google extending Orkut, a social networking platform they developed a few years ago, or growing Google groups, or even launching their own version of a twitter. Instead they’ve been releasing small bits of social networking features, little by little. Previously, we’ve made the case that email is already the largest social network, however Google’s plans go beyond Gmail. First, let’s define what to look for, in order to identify what Google is concocting.
Oct 7, 2009
Every few months it seems the digerati go on a hunt for the next "shiny object." We tire of what's in front of us. We are eager to explore the next big thing. Marketers, perhaps out of fear of being left behind, are often right in step when plunging into new technology.
That latest object of our desire is Google Wave--a new, real-time platform that combines e-mail, instant messaging, document creation and collaboration. You can't spend any time on Twitter without geeks lusting after Google Wave invites, which are hard to come by because only 100,000 have them. The hype rivals the hoopla surrounding the iPhone before its launch.
Robert Scoble
Oct 2, 2009
I just got my Google Wave invite. No, I’m already out, so I can’t send one to you, sorry.
But this service is way overhyped and as people start to use it they will realize it brings the worst of email and IM together: unproductivity.
See, the first thing you notice is that you can see people chatting live in Google Wave.
That’s really cool if you are working on something together, like a spreadsheet or a Word document.
But it’s a productivity sink if you are trying to just communicate with other people.
It also ignores the productivity gains that we’ve gotten from RSS feeds, Twitter, and FriendFeed.
What do I mean by that?
Oct 1, 2009
Google last night invited 100,000 people to become the first users of its latest internet tool which aims to rival email, Twitter and Facebook.
Google Wave allows a limitless number of internet users anywhere in the world to have instant conversations and share files.
The service combines aspects of email, instant messaging, social networking and web chat and is aimed at friends catching up with one another and business partners sharing documents.
Jeff Jarvis
Sep 25, 2009
I spent yesterday marking the dangers around Sidewiki. Today, I’ll say what I think Google should do with it: close the toolbar app, open it up to the entire conversation, and turn it purely into an API. And probably buy Technorati.
I read a great deal of the discussion about Sidewiki yesterday: much of it in the comments on my blog post, much found through search in Technorati and Google News, much through trackbacks, much on Twitter, much through links on sites I read, and a tiny bit on Sidewiki itself (sorry, can’t find a URL to link to that).
Some of the comments said the conversation is already fractured and my trail would seem to prove the point. That was the common word – fractured. But I’d quibble with the choice and argue that the conversation isn’t broken; that it is occurring just where it should be: in the cloud, where it is controlled by no one.
Jun 2, 2009
Social media is revolutionizing our lives as individuals and as marketers. In the last year, Facebook exploded globally and Twitter grew by a staggering 1382%. Last week Google launched the ‘Wave’, a new in-browser collaboration tool, ushering in the era of real time, aggregated communication.
May 28, 2009
Yesterday, during the Google I/O keynote, Google’s VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, laid out a grand vision for the direction Google sees the web heading towards with the move to the HTML 5 standard. While we’re not there yet, all the major browser players besides Microsoft are aligned and ready for the next phase, which will include such things as the ability to run 3D games and movies in the browser without additional plug-ins. But Google wants to take it one step further with a brand new method of communication for this new era. It’s called Google Wave.
Davis Thinking
