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Thursday
Oct012009
Google Wave 1.0 = RSS, the Sequel. In Other Words, DoA... for Now
Young Urban ProfessionalYou can't spend any time on Twitter without geeks lusting after Google Wave. Here's my quick take...it has as much chance catching on as RSS did.
I have had a Google Wave sandbox account since late July. It's slick to be sure. However, what I keep asking myself is this: what problem does it solve? In many ways it's overly complex. In fact it's too complex for the era of the Attention Crash where all of us, especially knowledge workers, are crying for simplicity.
Could it be an amazing enterprise collaboration tool? Sure, maybe. Could it be a Twitter, Facebook or email killer for consumers or a cure for cancer? I doubt it.
Wave requires a new way of thinking. Sure, we're capable of it as humans. But as Mike Elgan, Anil Dash and Scoble wisely assess, Wave maybe ahead of its time. We like linearity. We need more tools that, as Jeff Jarvis has written, offer elegant organization - as Facebook and Google do. Wave does not - at least yet. It doesn't solve problems. If three of the geekiest geeks I know are not over the moon about it, then how will anyone else be?
Wave may stall the same way RSS unfortunately did. RSS is one of the greatest Internet innovations of the last decade (thank you Dave!). So why did it never take off with consumers? Simple. It didn't solve problems that many people have. It only solved problems that some, eg info junkies, had. And it required a new way of thinking and operating. (I would argue the entire concepts of feeds only took off once Twitter and Facebook simplified it.)
But what about Gmail you say? Gmail too was a complex beast when it debuted with its conversation views and interface - and it caught on. Yes, but Gmail was different. It solved problems: mail storage quotas and killer search. Thus people were willing to make the investment to master it.
So definitely get excited about Wave. It is way cool. It is real time - where the world is going. But, for now, it does create more problems than it solves. Let's see if Wave 2.0 fixes that.
Reader Comments (41)
hey certainly Google wave is quite an opportunity for Google to take what is left on the internet.... hey get more reviews here.... http://jitsin.spaces.live.com
Google has a tendency to be so engineering driven (no offense meant to lots of brilliant engineers) while forgetting the "average user" on the web's lack of attention span. Wave could be successfull if they listen to feedback and make it much more palatable for the average person who lives on email, Twite and/or other Social Media. In in the end, Google has to motivate people to move to Wave and deal with standard "switching costs" in the market.
Thanks for the interesting posting. Here i have been noticed for the Wave. Thanks and to Google for their a lot of innovations. RSS it is easy to be in touch :-)
No offense, but RSS did catch on and literally drives most of the tools that you discuss here, right? As for what problem this solves, it makes office group work or collaborations a real-time and very organized process. That's just one. It eliminates having multiple platforms to communicate with others. That's just a couple of the top of my head.
I also use RSS every day, I think it's a mainstream success now. I would like to try the wave, see what that's all about.Twitter, et al., no interest from me.RM
Steve, your question "what problem does it solve" really gets to the heart of the problem with Wave. Every customer experience starts with a person who has a problem or desire they'd pay money to solve. It's fine that as customers can't articulate the need (if Henry Ford asked his customers what they wanted they would have said 'faster horses') - but we have to ACT on something. Products aimed at no clear triggering need are doomed. Google may be "learning live" with Wave. That would be expensive learning. I'm anxious to see what happens next. More on how solving a customer need is directly connected to financial performance: http://www.ceforprofit.com/domino.html. Thanks for your post, Steve.Linda Ireland
What problem does this solve? Anyone who has worked on collaborative projects will see the answer very quickly. My first thought was that once I have my team on Wave, I can kiss SharePoint goodbye.
Hi Steve, dunno whether you are still reading comments on this article? Regardless, your question about the value that Wave provides has had me thinking ever since I read it (and subsequently started using Wave about 2 weeks ago.)I just came across an article that sums up my take perfectly, and might be a useful answer to your original question:http://danieltenner.com/posts/0012-google-wave.htmlArthur
I also use RSS every day
Very interesting article. Has really hit the nail on the head for me although I agree with a lot of the comments here that it's far too early to really appreciate what Google Wave will become. I'm liking the statement: '..what does Google Wave solve?..' afterall, you could say email is still perfectly adequate for the 21st century although that's not to say there's no reason to rewrite email. Man, if I had a dollar for every time I've rewritten some code to make it better OO or more secure I'd have a Bugatti Veyron by now :-)Moving on, strangely enough, I'm seeing a natural resistance (i.e. old habits die hard) towards Google Wave amongst even my tech friends to revert back to MS Messenger and Google Talk to collaborate on-line, despite my pushing towards Wave. Due to that experience alone, I can see it's going to take a while before the average Internet user starts to embrace Wave, and that's even when we all have a better idea of what Google can be, after all, I believe the public opinion favours something with purpose rather than an unknown entity which it currently feels like, at least, within the media.P.s. Just a Blip about the more recent comments regarding RSS. Personally, I think there's some truth to be told in how social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube have changed public opinion of the Internet. Back when RSS was released, on-line services were very much seen as 'geeky' tools whereas now people are far more interested with on-line tech almost to the point where they're looking for new on-line toys to play with, even for the none techies.. With this said, I think if RSS was released today it would probably do far better.Thanks,
learn truth now
Yeah, you're completely missing the point. It solves HUGE current problems. You just don't realize they ARE problems because you're so used to them and have - until now - had no alternative but to accept them as unavoidable parts of the internet."Hosted Conversations" is the magic word. Centralizing the way we talk and share stuff on the internet is so mindblowingly different from the way we've always done stuff up till now that it's easy to see a post like this having trouble even realizing how many things we'd LIKE to do but never could before have been solved by Wave.Take posting pictures, for example. You take a shiny new album, you post it on Facebook. But oh wait, you have some myspace friends you'd like to share the pics with too. And there's a forum you're a member of where you'd like to share the pics as well...Pre-Wave, you can either give up and go home, or you can post separate copys of the same pictures to all those different sites! -If you want to do face tagging (pretty much the best part of posting pics on the internet), you've gotta tag the same face in the same picture 2 or 10 dif times.-If anyone leaves a comment, it's attached only to that copy of the pic, on that one site. The same pic on all the other sites is left nekkid and commentless.-(The copies in all those different places is also wasting space, on the off chance you care about cluttering up the internet/storage)
Great points made throughout
RSS hit it HUGE with me ... I'm also the targeted 'tech/information-guru' demographic. The general population will catch on to RSS indirectly. Meaning, tech people like us creating web apps that make advanced features of RSS into easy to use features. Those sites are just starting to pop up so it may take 2 or 3 more years for it to hit the average-tech mainstream demographics and move at a steady pace into the more general mainstream population.
I find it very interesting that you're putting Google Wave and RSS in the same line (I've actually gotten to your website by searching for "Google Wave RSS"). I think Wave as the potential to replace RSS if it gets embedded in most websites as a content container. See, instead of subscribing to RSS feeds and getting updates when my feed reader updates my feeds, I would subscribe to the Wave containing the blog post for example, and I would see the wave in my inbox every time someone begins to type a comment, or the post is updated, in real time.The same people who are huge RSS uses might be to use Wave for this kind of activity when websites begin to use it as a backbone for their data.
What a load of bullshit. Wave solves the problem of having numerous accounts on various social and other services. It features an open API, quite contrary to the locked-up corporate environments of Facebook and the like. Your post shows a thorough misunderstanding of the most basic facts about the service.Disclaimer: I am not a Google employee.