So it’s been ages since I’ve blogged (at least here – I’m a little more active on Twitter, but even then it’s been slow of late), but figured I’d throw a few comments out about my first impressions of Google Wave.
In a nutshell, it seems to me as if Wave is Google’s version of what email should have been, had the web been the web it is now when email was invented. It allows you to collaborate either synchronously or asynchronously with any number of people – I guess it’s a sort of social networking meets chat meets email meets blogging kind of space. I think it’s got real potential for changing the way we communicate, but before we get too excited about it, consider what we do now and how it might change the way we use other apps.
For example, replace Twitter followers with people in a Wave, and you’ve got the ability to not only micro blog (without the character limit), but also convert your micro blogs into conversation threads – something Twitter doesn’t really do well (though there are a number of Twitter apps that help with that).
I’ll wait until I’ve got a few more colleagues and friends using Wave before I make my judgement, but overall I think it’s the kind of thing I could grow to like using. I’ve always used email for communication – even now at work due to so many other techs being blocked (I can’t use Wave at work!) – so the ability to take the advantages of real-time communication and sharing and combine it with something that for most people should feel as simple as email is a real bonus.