Get Ready for Google's New Wave Act

Sept. 30 It Starts Dropping Invites for New Social Collaboration Tool

Posted by Dan Shust on 09.29.09 @ 08:37 AM


Dan Shust

Tomorrow could be a very big day for the internet. Years from now we might look back on it as a milestone for the web, social networking, marketing and communication in general. Heck, it could even define the beginning of Web 3.0 (Ugh, did I say Web 3.0? Never mind, we're gonna come up with a better name in an upcoming post.)

You see, Sept. 30 is the date Google starts sending out Wave invites to the general public. 100,000 to be exact.

If you aren't familiar with it, Google Wave is, in Google's words, "a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. A Wave is equal parts conversation and document, where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and more. Google Wave is also a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services and to build extensions that work inside waves."

Will Google Wave redefine the web and how we interact digitally?

So ... what's that mean?

In a nutshell, Google is attempting to integrate e-mail, instant messaging, media sharing, social networking, document creation, project management, entertainment and much more into shareable Waves. These Waves can be accessed in a variety of ways, via a reader, embedded in a website, from a mobile device, etc. And, of course, the Wave Platform is open source, fully extendable and customizable.

Goggle Wave is the definition of a disruptive technology. And, if it takes off, it has the potential to redefine the web and how we interact digitally. Does this spell the death of Twitter? What about blogging? Flickr? How about Facebook? Hard to say yet. But Google Wave could become the main way we interact with those services (and many others) going forward -- if it catches on.

Wave opens up myriad opportunities for brands as well.

Say, for example, a marketer wanted to create a Wave to solicit user generated content -- photos/videos of a certain product in action, testimonials, ratings, etc. The architecture of a Wave makes it very easy for the user to drag and drop media and converse in the Wave. The brand can easily repurpose the content automatically, in real time, in blogs, destination websites, mobile/location based applications, etc. The history of the Wave is always available so the user can go back in time to see how the content and conversations develop. Heady stuff indeed.

Google's Gmail has more than 146 million uses worldwide. They could easily become Wave users overnight once Google opens the floodgates. (Sorry, bad pun.) Sound exciting? Scary? How will it affect your social media strategy?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Shust is director of emerging media at Resource Interactive, where he mans the research-and-development lab. He blogs at resource.com/wethink and danshust.com, and you can follow him on Twitter, @getshust.

7 Comments

By DSM | BROOKINGS, SD September 29, 2009 12:23:46 pm:

sounds interesting!

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By TheWealthSquad | Riceville, TN September 29, 2009 04:12:09 pm:

Anything that makes it easier to share and communicate will have an impact. It will be interesting to see how it integrates into some of the current social circles and how easy it actually is.

Blogging took off when sites made it drop dead easy to blog. It will be interesting to see if Wave makes as big an impact. I will wait and see how it is implementing though before declaring it a game changer :)

Scott
http://www.AskTheWealthSquad.com/blog/
http://www.twitter.com/scottlovingood
http://www.linkedin.com/in/scottlovingood

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By Sixguys | Utrecht, NL September 29, 2009 04:17:05 pm:

This is fantastic! It's a logical extension of both Google's existing technologies (such as Google Talk) and philosophy/vision (ie, hosted solution, social networking, collaborative). Great to see it being open source, can't wait to dig in and see or build its features!

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By Zovue | Amherst, NS September 30, 2009 09:21:21 am:

Thats interesting about google moving into social networking.
Currently there is already a popular social network http://www.zovue.com that you can store photos, share HD video, network with friends, instant messenger and an online shopping network. i wonder how it will affect them?

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By voyager360 | SANTA FE, NM September 30, 2009 02:45:34 pm:

And just think... how many years ago was it that the DOJ came down on Microsoft for trying to become another monopoly?

We have Google Mail. Google Check out. Google Docs. A Google phone, Google search, Google AdSense, Google Pay Pre Click ads, Google voice mail, Google bought YouTube so they do video. Google prints books on demand and now... Google social networking.

Getting to be a firm that offers all things to all people is how Yahoo managed to drop to less than 20% market share.

Google's management apparently doesn't study history very well which is pretty damned ironic as my guess is they've probably chronicled and cataloged Yahoo's downfall.

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By rjw2116 | New York, NY September 30, 2009 07:28:37 pm:

At first it was hard for me to imagine what Google Wave would look like and even harder to imagine the potential ramifications of such a communication medium. After a little bit of digging around though, I am excited to see if this catches on. I hope that they release this soon as I might be able to implement Wave into my project for my marketing class. Check out my blog for my favorite ads and some of my thoughts on advertising www.ad-vantage-us.blogspot.com

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By rjw2116 | New York, NY September 30, 2009 11:04:36 pm:

E-mail is dead. I just watched the video and I think this changes the way people communicate altogether.

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