Tuesday 2 June 2009

The Internet Just Got Bigger

This is Google Wave, a web app in development from the Google team that aims to revolutionise the way we communicate online.

And I must say, from the developer preview they've just showcased it looks pretty damned exciting. It's like a new take at email, combining principals of Instant Messaging, message boards and email itself into something that's very much unique. Anyone who has used Gmail knows that Google is fond of the concept of "Conversations" and Wave is very much a fulfilment of that concept.

Email is very linear - it works well on a one-to-one basis where participants are easily able to message and reply to messages, and Gmail is very good at collating messages that form a conversation (something that classic mail clients can be poor at). But when it comes to group conversations email becomes cumbersome and the more participants involved the more cumbersome it becomes. If a message is sent by one person to another 4, all of whom reply to the original message and all of whom subsequently comment on each others replies you quickly end up with a confusing myriad of messages that are difficult to collate into a coherent narrative. Wave aims to bring everything together into a single conversation at a central location much like a Message Board/Forum but far more flexible than that.

The great thing about Wave is that it removes the linearity that existing methods of online communication suffer from. If we go back to our group email, if the original message contained 5 points or questions then each participant would give their responses in one solid block which everyone would have to read as a single unit, possibly referring back to the original. With Wave any part of the original message can be replied to in isolation, therefore each participant can provide each of their replies directly under the point/question and reply directly to each other in the same location. The result is a single location for the conversation that can be contributed to in a fluid manner with contributors able to contribute anywhere within the conversation/Wave, even within other contributions. The Wave also has a playback feature that will playback every contribution to the Wave in order allowing the user to quickly track the progress of the Wave up to that point.

Another useful feature is the ability to embed content directly into the Wave, pictures, maps, videos, links, whatever you need really can be added to the Wave to enhance the conversation.

There is a whole slew of other shit going on here, and no doubt there'll be mountains more stuff to come, check out the video linked above to get the whole story so far - if you have 1hr 20mins to waste.

Wave is still developer-only at the moment, but it's expected to go into public beta later this year. I reckon there's a decent chance Wave could replace email as the online personal communication method of choice - it might even threaten IM protocols if they can get it to work fast enough. I do think email and IM have a place in the world with Wave, but I think their roles will change significantly. There is a strong possibility that Gmail and Wave could be combined at some point in the future, and with Googles strong commitment to integrating their web apps there's a strong probability Wave will be integrated too.

freedoms_stain, intrigued, and out.

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