The Blog on Branding

Is a Google Wave Invite Worthwhile?

In September 2009, 100,000 invites were extended for Google Wave. Those invited were then allowed to invite twenty or thirty additional users. Just a few days ago another batch of invites was extended.

“… another batch of invites was extended.”

Everyone is talking about Google Wave right now. Even if with the initial 100,000 invitations and the additional invites recently given out, people are still pursuing Google Wave invites interested in checking out this new, exciting online tool.

Interested in learning more?

• About Google Wave
• Advantages vs. Disadvantages
• Google Wave on the I-Phone

About Google Wave

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A “wave” can be both a conversation and a document that allows users to discuss and work collaboratively using formatted texts, photos, videos, maps, and much more.

A wave is also both shared and live:

• Any member can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content, and add participants at any time during the process. Playback allows anyone the capability to rewind a wave to see who said what and when they said it.
• With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have quicker conversations, see edits, and interact with extensions in real time.

There are a myriad of ways to use Google Wave from group projects and meeting notes to photo sharing and interactive games. As more and more people begin using Google Wave and becoming comfortable with it, there will be entirely new ways and benefits associated with this online tool.

“Google Wave lets you share meeting notes, photos, and games.”

Advantages vs. Disadvantages

There are some great advantages, but currently the list of disadvantages and usability problems outweighs the benefits of Google Wave.

Advantages:

• Innovative interface: the user interface is new, exciting, and innovative, but it is not unfamiliar because its layout is similar to the inbox of your mail application. Waves activate participants to contribute: the user interface encourages further contributions to the wave.
• Real-time collaboration: this tool enables you to actually see your friends, co-workers, family, and contacts type in and change content in real time.

Disadvantages

• Missing revisions with rollbacks: there is no revisioning system in place yet. If your wave is messed up, you have to fix it manually.
• No permanent hiding of replies yet: there is also no way to permanently hide replies.
• Not everyone is invited: currently Google Wave is not fit for real usage because too few people have an account.
• No notifications for updates of the waves: there are no means of monitoring waves. (This is one of Google Wave’s biggest weaknesses).
• Too slow for a real chat: Google Wave is too slow for a real chat still.
• Google accounts are required: a Google Account is required to participate in a wave which causes a potential disadvantage, especially when engaging with business clients.
• Confidential information can be accessed: once someone is invited to a wave, he/she he can access it forever. Therefore, if a discussion reveals information you don’t want to share with all participants, you have a problem.
• Waves lack readable URLs: waves have permanent URLs, but their readability is lacking.

While Google Wave offers an exciting, new technology, there are still plenty of disadvantages associated with it. Someday Google Wave is going to be amazing, but unfortunately for now it is still quite complex with several usability problems.

“Just go to wave.google.com on your Safari browser.”

Google Wave on the iPhone

Everyone may not have a Google Wave invite yet, but it already works on the iPhone.

Here are two ways to get Google Wave to work on your iPhone:

1. Go to wave.google.com in mobile Safari on your iPhone. From there, you are able to select different conversation waves and contacts, or just jump into a specific wave. (Note: It warns you that you are not using a browser supported during the preview, but if you continue to click through it, it works).
2. As with any Web page on the iPhone, you can save a bookmark on your home screen, and it creates a small icon which launches mobile Safari to that specific page. When you save the Wave bookmark to your Home screen though, you go to Wave, but without the Safari wrapper. In this way, it looks more like a regular application.

Although this is still new and there are probably a variety of issues yet to work out, it is obvious that the Google Wave team is working to make Wave available in mobile browsers.

Will you wave “hello” to Google Wave or dismiss it with a “goodbye?” Comment below.

Amanda Wilczynski Want content written for your Brand that shows up #1 on Search Engines and brings you new customers? Contact us.