RIP Google Wave

by Andre Engelbrecht

google wave

Since Google Wave was announced, I was really excited about the product. I could already see vast use cases for this technology, and started thinking of the different ways I could include this in my day to day business activities.

Last week we were all shocked by the announcement that Google Wave will be closed. This came as a real surprise to me, as I only just managed to convince people to use Wave as a discussion tool for planning project sprints etc.

One would think that Google would have enough money lying around to keep it running a bit longer, or try a different marketing approach, before deciding to kill the application altogether.

So why the slow uptake?

According to Google, there isn't a strong enough uptake in users actually using wave, which is why they decided to close the Project. Now I'm by no means business savvy, so my opinions don't really hold high ground in the business world, but In my personal opinion, this was a bad call in judgement.

In this case I think that Google, and others, are just looking at the straight numbers as to how many people have signed up, how many users are actively using it, now many people are just not using it at all.

But I think everyone was so quick to dismiss the product that they didn't stop to ask, “Why is so little people using it?”

A Personal Observation

Here is my personal observation. When I first received my invite, I sent invites to many other people, and my little network of people I saw on wave grew slowly. But here is the problem.

Too many users was comparing Wave to email, and I even saw a comparison to Facebook floating about. Everyone expected it to work like Email, probably because Wave was marketed as: “What email would have been like, if it was invented today.”

For me, Wave was more about collaboration and discussion, and this is where, in my opinion, most people lost track of Wave. The majority of users…

• … at the time, did not have any immediate discussions.
• … did not have all their friends on wave.
• … expected it to tie in to their email, directly or indirectly.
• … was just experimenting with the Product, and therefore no “real” discussions and collaboration was taking place.

To me, Wave felt cumbersome and “empty” in the beginning, mostly because of the points made above. But it's not until I stepped back, looked at what wave provides, and then think about where and how can I use Wave, that I finally realised the potential.

Here are the points I came up with:

• Wave is not meant for conversations between 2 people. Only when there are 3 or more people on a wave, does one reap the most rewards.
• Wave is excellent for project planning or discussions on a specific topic, but just gets cumbersome for casual chat/communication.
• Wave should not be used as email even though it was marketed as such. You cannot expect millions of people to just give up email and now start using Wave. Email still has it's place in formal communication, and I believe that Wave an excellent supplement.

Bye Bye /wave

So I'm really sad to see wave going. I've used it a lot the last couple of months, and was only now starting to warm up to it enough, and starting to pull other people into it. I think Google should have waited a bit longer, maybe one more year…

I will still use it for the time being, until such time that Google pull it completely.

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