GO WAVE , GO ENTREPRENEURS, GO INNOVATORS

That said, adding to your list of “technological revamps”, I think it´s worth pointing out that the whole idea behind Wave is as Lars Rasmussen described it at Google I/O several months ago: “We set out to answer the question: What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?”

Since Google have Gmail which is one of the major email services around. The obvious question for me is: Then when and how will you turn Gmail users Wave users? If the whole idea is a reinvention of mail, then why not just do it? Convert email to wave and start with Gmail. I think this is what Google will do too (at least if they believe in the Wave product which I hope they do). When and how will they do it? Wrote a post about this a few months ago btw:

http://tongstromberg.com/2009/09/30/gmail-turns-wave/

I find it very useful as a collaborative writing tool and liaising with customers. In the past Basecamp has been my collaboration tool of choice but Wave is much more immediate.

I would like to see Google develop and adapt the interface. At the moment it’s too much like email and as such limits people to thinking about it as an email-like tool.

Lets see what 2010 brings for Wavers.

The one failure Google may be guilty of here however is the way they launched Waves. By launching it with invites they built a hype that they couldn’t meet at this stage. A big part of why they couldn’t meet the demands is because at this stage it is a closed community. When they launched gmail through invites people could send e-mail to their friends who didn’t have gmail and still benefit from the positive sides of gmail.

With Google Waves there really aren’t much to do if your friends, co-workers and other acquaintences don’t have it. And in most cases it doesn’t make a very big difference if ONE of your friends have Waves, since it is a community tool. That is where I see the big advantages in Waves from my point of view as a communication theorist.

So I think Waves will be big in the future. It has far too much good opportunities not to be a hit. However, they shouldn’t have launched it by building they hype by cutting they supply (i.e. through invites). They probably wanted to test the beta in a smaller group, but at the same time they created a demand in people to get it, which in this case gave them a minor disadvantage i think. In the short run. In the long run I don’t think people will remember that miscount.