google Wave. The last night of email?

September 30th, 2009 • Allgemein, Tools, Trends

It’s only one more day until google Wave launches. 100,000 users will be the first to receive an invite and I hope I will be among them (try to get your invite here). Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and (mobile) collaboration. A wave will be both, conversation and a document where people can interact, share and integrate formats of all sorts (pics, videos, audio…) – and everything real time.

By what we know about google Wave it might really be a game changer and redefine collaboration and the social realm (think Twitter not Facebook). Waves will come with drag-and-drop functionality, be embeddable, integrate multiple formats etc and be open source. That means, developers will create applications for google Wave. In short: google Wave may the answer to the question ‘How would email look like if it was invented in 2009′. And I am looking forward to seeing what that means when it gets live.

google’s new ecosystem

By adding more and more social functionalities google currently creates a decentralized community of a new kind. It basically takes the twitter idea and puts it to a new level with Wave. Users don’t connect via profile pages, but via common interests and topics of interests – most often with googlemail as connector. Last week’s launch of google Sidewiki is a good example for this community concept which is completely decentralized, yet scalable. For a couple of weeks now google Reader’s share button is intertwined with twitter – a simple yet very cool feature. Plus a lot of other concepts which take google’s products and enrich it with an added, social value. What I like about this strategy is google’s focus on the user’s purpose, not the community itself. google makes their own products more valuable by adding key social functionalities. It’s not about creating ‘a google brand community’. It’s about turning the whole web into a giant google-driven community.

Facebook vs google

It’s very interesting to see how old adversaries in the digital market fight for new battlegrounds. google Wave seems to be the next step after Facebook succeeded with Facebook Connect vs google Friend Connect. Integrating the social graph as key element in future expansion plans seems at least for Facebook to be extremely promising. User registrations skyrocket together with the revenue. google Wave might be the first salvo in the next battle for digital productivity tools. Especially its obvious integrateabilty and it’s support of open source development will surely make it become an extremtely promising platform. It’s just one more night. Maybe digital communication will look differently tomorrow.

Update:No sign of a google Wave invite by now – but check out lifehacker’s preview here.

What do you think? Do you expect google Wave the (sorry) next big thing? Are we going to wave next year constantly? Let’s discuss.

Tags: Business, Cool, google, google wave, Idea, innovation, Strategy, Tools

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