Google Wave is the new online tool from Google which offers real-time collaboration on threads called ‘waves’, which are treated as both a conversation and a document.

with:public

I’ve been using Google Wave for over a month now and have had an incredibly mixed experience. Any friend-less waver’s first search will be ‘with:public’, which displays all waves in the public domain. I didn’t quite expect the rush of thousands and thousands of waves by equally bewildered wavers. This being an early preview edition, I can’t expect performance to be anywhere near the level of fully-fledged Google applications, though I fail to see how my initial Wave experience would ever be a speedy one.

The bad…

My bad experiences with Wave were mostly caused by the way other users were waving. A single wave would very quickly turn into a cross between a forum thread and an instant-messaging conversation. Since each contribution, however small, is treated as a revision to that wave, the playback feature very soon became confusing and useless:

Obviously there was no easy way to navigate the 1391 revisions.

Any Web service is up for misuse – we’ve all had the emails with ambiguous subjects like ‘FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: RE: RE: FW:your email’ and visited blogs where the comment thread has stretched and become unreadable, having turned into a lengthy debate between a handful of users.

The good

At this point I started to think about how I would use Google Wave. There certainly is a lack of structure which often results in free-for-all threads, but this is hopefully something that will only plague public waves. Using Wave with family and friends, or at work to talk about specific projects, has a structure and etiquette which means you’re not talking over one another, adding Su-Doku games into threads or editing others’ posts.

I could see myself depending on Wave more than email, especially at work. Editing, tidying up and collaborating on waves is wonderfully intuitive, and adding contacts and copying waves is a cinch. The ability to attach files and integrate with other Google applications is also very promising – a nice alternative to large email attachments.

The future

An insight from a fellow waver: “You cannot expect self-etiquette to materialise within a new technology without giving some sort of guidance or direction on how it should be used. And in no way is a 1 hour 20 minute video the way to do that”. Developing a real alternative to email (let alone replacing it) is no mean feat and I’m sure user guidance is something Google have thought about from the outset. Given their excellent record, they certainly have plans beyond the tutorial video.

Many companies have had a great experience switching to cloud-based Google applications such as Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Mail. The key to Wave’s survival is surely in proving its worth to businesses as a tool for rapid communication and collaboration. The difficulty of this task completely depends on the improvements they make next year. Along with Google’s Chrome browser and Chrome OS, 2010 is set to be an exciting year for the big G.

Tags: google wave