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Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko —  — Web — email, google, im, wave

Google Wave Preview – first look

So I had Wave account for some time, thanks to invitations from regular reader and commenter xangelo of Feet Have Been and rennablue of… I have no idea who this is, no hits in any contacts. :)

By now there is enough stuff on Wave posted to confuse anybody, so for for those who have access to preview version or not either – let’s carefully go over established facts and look at what is defined for sure.

google_wave_interface

Glossary

  • Wave – is product, being developed by Google, with the paradigm of it to be major communication platform. Much of Wave is or will be open source. Google intends for it to be more of a standard, rather than dedicated Google service;
  • wave – single thread of conversation;
  • blip – single wave message;
  • extensions, gadgets and bots – tools of various kind that can be attached to waves and extend their functionality.

What Wave is

There is already myriad of definitions for Wave. My issue with those – they are precise, while Wave is actually very general thing.

Wave is foremost communication platform that defines core features and options for building on top of those.

Core features are:

  • speed – messages are being exchanged in near-realtime, character by character;
  • editorial options – messages can be edited, while history of all changes is preserved (playback feature);
  • flexibility – waves can fit multiply classic paradigms, such as IM, email, forum, wiki and more, as well as any combination of those.

While existing tools and services aim at maximize convenience of usual means of communication, Wave gives you tools to work out own style, pace and form to communicate in.

At down to earth level – Wave is exclusively (for now) Google service in early development stages.

State of Wave

As of now it is defined as preview. It’s not even beta, and most certainly it is far from Google’s (very broken) definition of beta.

  • access is limited to those who registered early for preview and their contacts via invitation system;
  • stability, performance and browser support are very raw;
  • integration with existing methods of communication is yet to come.

Wave is full of people who signed up just-because and those who genuinely try to make sense of it. In current stay it is playground and far from valid tool.

What Wave feels like

While intuition is subjective, it rarely fails me when poking new product. As for me Wave feels right. It is flexible enough to allow complex communication thread with multiply people, yet manages to keep structure intact and prevents talk from falling apart.

While Wave as form of communication is impressive, Wave as web app is much less so. Some interface decisions defy staples of usability (custom scroll bars, seriously?) and it all clunks as generic web2.0ish stuff in a bad sense.

Luckily form here is of less importance and given open nature of platform it will be ironed out… or undercut by better alternatives.

Why bother with Wave

For those who enjoy Dilbert comics as much as I do – Wave is classic attempt by single company to hijack new industry standard. :)

There is thin balance here:

  • Google wants it to succeed and puts own name on that, frankly if Wave was nameless startup – hype would have died in a week;
  • Wave has no chance to succeed, unless widely adopted outside of Google reach as well as inside.

Ideal Wave scenario – it replaces email as primary online communication pipe and cannibalizes as many other pipes as it can while at it.

What I find most interesting is that other large companies have no symmetric answer to Wave. I see several distinct possibilities:

  • Google surprised everyone and hijacked new niche;
  • Wave is expected to fail;
  • other companies plan to make use of open Wave technology, letting Google do grunt work and scrubbing Google logo of it later.

In my opinion for regular user there is no gain to invest in using Wave early and there is no loss to ignore it either. It might become common and essential but that possibility is hardly set in stone.

Overall

Wave is giant project with high potential that will play out depending on two factors:

  • integration into existing communication chains;
  • global adoption.

Have a Wave account already? Add me rarrst@googlewave.com (I hate extra R, who knew it will haunt my Google account forever) and come chat blip around at official Rarst.net wave.

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20 Comments

  • Angelo R. #

    Good post, I tried to refrain from doing this since I don't think most readers will use it past the novelty item phase, but you definitely covered all the points. I think that it will not replace email as the defacto communication method. My primary reason for this is that it has elements of a social network, and I don't see people jumping ship off Facebook anytime soon. Add to that the fact that it is confusing and will seem like an information overload to most people and this will remain a very tech-niche project. However, that same tech-niche will devour the API and hopefully come up with some creative uses for it.

  • szekelya #

    I'd also like to summarize Wave for my colleagues, and I'd like them to use it. But I'd like to disagree with you, ... but wait, I have no access to Google Wave so I've never seen that and have no idea about it. Any chance that someone offers me an invitation? :) thanks szekelya

  • Angelo R. #

    I'm not sure if Rarst has any more invites, but if he doesn't mind I can hand out a few invites exclusively to Rarst visitors.

  • Rarst #

    @Angelo Wave is social is more pure sense of communication, rather than social like profiles and message walls swamp of social networks. I disagree on Wave and information overload. It is new and confusing in a way new things are. But for actual information presentation it is very clear and does much better job than email (as for me). @szekelya Unfortunately those who have been invited have not been provided with invites to give out themselves. At least I wasn't so far, otherwise my readers would be natural first choice to give those out. Angelo seems to have some left, so I can send him your email if you don't mind.

  • Geek Squeaks’ of the Week (#37) « What's On My PC #

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  • szekelya #

    @Rarst: It would be great, thanks. Please strip the "+....." part. :)

  • Rarst #

    @szekelya Forwarded. Just note that Wave invites aren't instant, took me something around week to got in after invite.

  • szekelya #

    OK. Thanks to both of you.

  • Angelo R. #

    @Szekelya I've sent you an invite.

  • The DataRat #

    . Best that I can discern, Wave is just things we already have ...but combined. Not convinced IM/forum/e-mail/wiki/collaboration tool as one thing is either novel or particularly useful. ( How difficult is it to have IM and an e-mail client, etc. all open at the same time ? ) Simple copy-and-paste negates any necessity for it. The needless complexity is just asking for glitches. Seems far less problem prone to have each function as a discrete application. Copy-and-paste between them ! Hard hard is ~that~ ? But at LifeHacker they're having orgasms over Google Wave. The avant garde bleeding edge of trendiness. . The DataRat .

  • szekelya #

    There at LifeHacker they have orgasms about nearly everything starting from PVC pipe laptop stands to cardboard iPhone holders, but I take the liberty to get enthusiastic only about stuff I really need or like. They have recently featured one of my desktop screenshots / system meters, so sometimes they are hyping the right things. :) I also can't imagine how it would be so revolutionary thing changing everything we used to think about internet communication, but that does not mean too much, I never understood the facebook and twitter hype neither, still many think those are the best things since sliced bread. For me the [gmail / greader / pidgin-with-multiple-protocols / cellphone for "live chat"] combo did the job, and I have already stopped wishing for a desktop gmail client for a while, I like my browser better than my desktop apps and prefer to talk on my phone than in IM clients. In that manner a web based combination of all of these might be a great idea, but since my online social life does not even remotely resembles of those youngsters, who are so loud about it, I might not be from the typical target group. Bottomline, I want to try that once my invitation arrives before I'd be calm to put that in the facebook/myspace/twitter drawer.

  • Rarst #

    @DataRat Having multiply inflexible tools for same task (communication) is highly counter-productive. Email is standard but completely suck, over two people in the loop and conversation falls apart. Rest of stuff is so specific that with every new contact you have to do complex acquainting dance of figuring out how your IM accounts intersect (if at all), how do you exchange files and so on. Often this ends up with signups to even more services. So I see great value in single flexible tool as replacement. Wave also plans to gate with existing tools so that will solve convincing other parties to signup if they are fixed on tools they have. By the way you are off the mark with complexity. Wave manages to pull of flexibility without being complex. Naturally there is more to it that usual send/receive routine, but it is easy to figure out and use. Overall I like theory behind Wave, but I am not that confident in specific Google's implementation of that theory and if it will reach critical mass. Anyway it's way too early to see meaningful impact from Wave, will see how it goes in next few years. @szekelya Wave is not revolutionary, it is evolutionary. It took basic building of existing communication tools and merged them in single concept.

  • The DataRat #

    . "I never understood the facebook and twitter hype neither" . Same here ! Facebook and, particularly, Twitter are entirely over-rated. . "Email is standard but completely suck, over two people in the loop and conversation falls apart" . Well, THAT's exact ~it~ ! Google Wave is, more than anything else, a COLLABORATION TOOL. I have enough difficulty finding meaningful conversation with a single individual at a time ...much less multiplex communications ! [ As opposed to a forum (like this one) which is one-to-many rather than true multiplex (i.e., simultaneous two-way). ] My experience being that each added person to real time communication arithmetically subtracts intelligence from the overall dialogue. The IQ of any given conversation elevates inversely to the number of people conversing ! . The DataRat .

  • Rarst #

    @DataRat Well, THAT’s exact ~it~ ! Google Wave is, more than anything else, a COLLABORATION TOOL. I consider it foremost communication tool. It simply does better job for collaboration because of good communication model. My experience being that each added person to real time communication arithmetically subtracts intelligence from the overall dialogue. The IQ of any given conversation elevates inversely to the number of people conversing ! That's what good Wave fixes or at least subdues. It allows side-discussions to fork into threads - they are there, but they do not ruin core topic. And strong editorial functions allow to easily weed stuff out and keep wave in shape. Much like moderators on forums and wikis have to do, but in Wave process is probably easier and faster. By the way do you need Wave invite as well? :) No wave account on email you use for comments.

  • The DataRat #

    . "By the way do you need Wave invite as well ?" . Thanks, but I got to wash my hair today. . The DataRat .

  • szekelya #

    BTW putting apart scepticism, if it turns out to be a good collaboration platform, I wonder if it can really solve all collaboration needs, or just combines the already existing tools, that you might find that sucks like email, but I might be satisfied with. The core thread plus sideforks plus media sounds fine, but never really felt that the existing tools would be so bad about it. What I'd like to have in a single collaboration tool (leading 10 people in a telco support and integrator department) on top and not instead of my existing e-mail / IM / presence / fileserver possibilities : -easy file sharing of eventually big files. Even cd iso images or bigger. -task assignment with notifiers, acknowledgement, possibility of progress or status reporting (not for project managers, no need for overcomplicated resource graphs and visual representation of task dependencies, just simple stuff) -groupcalendar that interacts with corporate tools (Outlook/Exchange and cellphone calendars) -rss feeds for separate topics -All this without having to direct our corporate mailing from internal Exchange accounts to public gmail - admitting, that I still have no understanding what and how exactly wave does. Will wave do some of these for me?

  • szekelya #

    @TheDataRat: "Thanks, but I got to wash my hair today." You're tough. :) "My experience being that each added person to real time communication arithmetically subtracts intelligence from the overall dialogue. The IQ of any given conversation elevates inversely to the number of people conversing !" Couldn't agree more. Same with meetings, unless there's a moderator with strong control, or if the meeting is too formal to get lost in irrelevant timewasting. If this is a imultaneous many to many communication form, I'm sure I'd want some control not to let fun overcome productivity.

  • Rarst #

    @szekelya easy file sharing of eventually big files. Even cd iso images or bigger. Basic file sharing is currently very easy in Wave - drag and drop. Only requires Google Gears installed. As for large files this might take some extension and/or running own corporate Wave server. It is too early for such features, so hard to say how it will be shaped. Same on calendars, hard to tell at moment. Just keep in mind that Wave is highly extensible stuff. If there will be demand there will be people happily developing extensions. No RSS feeds implemented for now. Anyway RSS is easy so I fully expect it will be in later, even if not as native function. All this without having to direct our corporate mailing from internal Exchange accounts to public gmail – admitting, that I still have no understanding what and how exactly wave does. This is one of the Wave strongest features. You can run own Wave server and use it to communicate globally as well - with Google waves or any third party server. Communications between your colleagues with your own accounts won't physically leave your server. Even if they talk in private mode on some external wave - those blips will be securely stored and won't get out. For now Google is only Wave implementation, but think of it as email - nowadays even cheap hosting can acts as your own email server. Wave is built to be like email - highly distributed and independent server structure, but standard and unified communication space.

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