The long awaited preview launch of Google Wave has come and gone. You can sign up to receive an invite here (don’t hold your breath) if you haven’t received one already.
It has launched with mixed reviews, most of which can be attributed to all the hype surrounding Wave and the fact that it’s still in alpha release. The potential is there, which is something not many will deny, unfortunately it hasn’t reached a level of usability as of yet that will engage most users.
The real benefits of Google Wave lie in mass contribution. In it’s current state, it’s a mashup of email, IM and Wiki. The limited number of users with invites also makes it quite difficult to use Wave to its full potential as you simply have a limited number of people to collaborate with.
My initial thoughts are that the success of Wave will rely on the use of third party applications, in the same way that Twitter has taken advantage of third party applications to notify users of updates and essentially customise their use. A few have already been released including Waveboard and a Firefox Add-On. Unless you continually check back to Wave to see if any updates have been made, it’s really just email laid out in an IM message string. This is where third party applications can really help customise your experience.
Wave has very much been sold on a replacement to email, with Google themselves stating that the premise behind Wave was “What would email be like if it was invented today?” (seen in the video below). Like Twitter, it will evolve to eventually find its own use with the help of third party applications, at least until some of this functionality is built into the product by Google.
> Google Wave has a long way to go…
> Waveboard: Google Wave Client for Mac and iPhone is Coming
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October 21st, 2009 at 11:46 am
hello.I'm looking for an invitation for google wave.I like it very much!Can you give me an invitation if you have one later?Thank you!
My email adress is:xiaohared@gmail.com
Thank you!