Google Wave – Is It Communication 2.0 ?
This is a guest post by Debojoti Pal. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
Google Wave isn’t actually a new term any more. With the huge amount of hype that has been going around it since being announced last year on May 27, it would be a surprise if regular net users are unaware of it. But is the hype justified?
Telephones and Emails have revolutionized our lives since their introduction and they did not need any hyped launch. Don’t get me wrong, I am a very big fan of Google. But still I was a bit skeptical when Google came out with this as you may know that Google wave is still in a limited preview and you need an invite to get in. So, after a lot of hunting, I did manage to get an invite from someone on a popular Internet Marketing forum.
What Google promised
“Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation
and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.”
How was it like ?
First look really did impress me. It’s a handy tool if you spend a lot of time on the Internet. You can do a lot of things from Google Wave including but not limited to:
- Chat and Instant Messaging
- Share Photos
- Network with others
- Embed videos in conversations
- And lots more
One thing I particularly liked was that it could be inserted in any website or blogs as a widget. When it picks up enough users after the full scale launch, it will make communication between users of a website of blog easier and that would be of great help to bloggers like us.
It is big a time-saver in this fast world. When you get so many of your daily needs at one place, it helps a lot. Everything is done in real-time and anyone can edit a wave (threaded message), the wiki way.
One area of initial problem may be the complexity of the service which takes a little time to get adjusted to. I won’t blame someone if he or she gets confused with it and loses interest. But there are good features like auto-correct, drag and drop file sharing and more to make up for it. It is expandable with add-ons if you need and as it is open source, may be you can make one for yourself.
Verdict
Google Wave is certainly a good tool. It does make it easier to communicate and collaborate. You can do a lot of things like share photos, email, group projects etc. But I cannot call is Communication 2.0 as the title of this post questions. Google Wave certainly does a good job by aggregating a lot of everyday items in one place in an easy-to-use manner, but does not introduce anything huge enough to start a new era in communication. Just don’t hope it to be a phenomenon like email was when it came out.
At the end, let me tell you that its still an unique and useful enough tool to use and feel yourself. You can ask for a Google Wave invite from Google if you want. Please share your views with Google Wave and let us know your experiences. And oh yes “Start Waving”.
