Google Wave & Its Business PotentialEver since it was announced by Google in May of this year the web has been abuzz with information regarding Google Wave and it’s potential impact on business communication and workgroup collaboration.
What is Google Wave?
“Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.” – Google
A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
What can I use Google Wave for?
- Organizing Events Keep a single copy of ideas, suggested itinerary, menu and RSVPs, rather than using many different tools. Use gadgets to add weather, maps and more to the event.
- Group Projects Collaboratively work in real time to draft content, discuss and solicit feedback all in one place rather than sending email attachments and creating multiple copies that get out of sync.
- Meeting Notes Prepare a meeting agenda together, share the burden of taking notes and record decisions so you all leave on the same page. Team members can follow the minutes in real time, or review the history using Playback.
- Brainstorming Bring lots of people into a wave to brainstorm – live concurrent editing makes the quantity of ideas grow quickly! It is easy to add rich content like videos, images, URLs or even links to other waves. Discuss and then work together to distill down to the good ideas.
My experience with Google Wave?
After waiting for several weeks (maybe even a month or two, I can’t remember) I finally received my Google Wave Invite and jumped onboard to see what all of the fuss was about. I was pleasantly surprised by it’s relative ease-of-use, although I was somewhat disappointed that out of the limited number of invites that had already been sent out I was only able to locate a few people within my local area with which to “wave.” But since then I have been handing out invites to friends, family, and business associates and am steadily growing my network. (More invites to hand out….see below.) While I haven’t used Wave for many business-related purposes yet I fully intend to in the months ahead. For those of you who may already have Wave, look me up at “allenmowery@googlewave.com.”
What impact will Google Wave have on the business and marketing world?
Blogger Mitch Joel at TwistImage says:
“Imagine brands inviting their consumers into a Google Wave – be it for customer service, product development or simply to discuss brand evangelism. This could become the highly personalized online social network many of us have been waiting for.”
When asked whether Google Wave is good for marketers he responds:
It is way too early to tell, but there are some indications that if a platform like Google Wave does take off, it will fragment the concept of an online social network and splinter it down to a place where these areas are not used by masses to congregate and boast how many friends or connections they have, but perhaps the metric becomes how many waves individuals are engaged with and how active the conversation and collaboration is. The platform obviously creates much more targeted inventory for advertising with the Google AdWords model (much like it does over at Gmail), but depending on how open or private these waves will be, this could also be one of those moments in time where people shift from having their opinions out in public, back into smaller, cozier and more personal conversations in a Google Wave.”
How can I get Google Wave?
Request an invite directly from Google by clicking here.
Request an invite directly from me by submitting a comment (including your request) below.
What do you think?
Have you tried Google Wave? What were your thoughts?
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