Feb
12
Google - the next wave?
Filed Under Community, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation
For months and months colleagues in the new media industry have been banging on about the latest BIG NEW THING just round the corner waiting to pounce and take over our collective consciousness (Twitter was the last one remember). This time it is Google Wave. This was previewed last year in a presentation now famous in Geekdom by the incredibly gifted development team also responsible for no less than Google Maps!
Google call it a ‘personal communication and collaboration tool’. A sort of mix of Facebook, Twitter, Email and Google docs, but with most of the action happening in real-time. Imagine seeing people’s tweets, emails and updates as they write and then being able to join in. (This takes time to explain so if you are interested here is one of the better talk-throughs).
Well its not quite here yet, the beta is not due until later this year. Yet there is already considerable polorisation of opinions about its value, ranging from a ‘this is the future’ Twitter-Killer ready to replace your email through to an ‘expression of the very worst that the social web has to offer’.
At present only a select few are testing Wave and most of these are computer technicians. I know quite a few of these and their comments tend to be quite similar, “I am finding it all very complex to use - but when I get my head around it I think it will be awesome. However the flow of information can be overwhelming”.
Now that quote is from a very talented technical director for a media company. I see him most days immersed in a wall of green code - you know, one of those guys in Hollywood movies that switch off power-stations from their laptops. This is the crux of the problem I have with the Wave - if HE of all people finds it complicated and overwhelming, then heaven help the rest of us!
A core foundation stone of Web 2.0 is that the tools are comparatively easy for ordinary digital consumers to learn and manage information - RSS , easy to use widgets, simple task flows. This platform shows a great deal of promise - and Google do say that it is definitely a work in progress - but if they don’t hugely simplify the user experience to fit closer to how human consciousness works with information and people, it will end up as just a highly innovative concept that got half-way towards a really game changing meta-application.
Remember, Google took over the web partly though the hyper-minimalist simplicity of the likes of the Google home page and more recently Google maps which are a dream to use, so I have some confidence that they have the insight and skills to get this right.
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[...] I wasn’t expecting this. I mentioned in my last post about my misgivings regarding the practical design and usability issues around Google Wave beta. [...]