What Google Wave Can Do For You

Google Wave is the new realtime multi-user collaboration and communication platform that was recently exclusively released (with much hullaballoo) to beta testers. Why should you care about Google Wave as a young professional? Because it’s important to be able to communicate and work well with your peers and Google Wave will definitely change the way you interact through the internet. Here’s why:

1. Google Wave prevents a cluttered inbox.  You’ve been in those email threads before. The massive, multi-branched monstrosities with hundreds of responses from multiple users, none of which have anything at all to do with you. You feebly reply to the starter of the email thread to opt you out time and time again but some dolt always chooses to ‘reply all’ to an earlier branch of the email.  You keep finding yourself stuck in the web and soon enough, you just learn to live with it because you really are powerless to do anything at all. Cluttered Inbox Syndrome (CIS) has become a fact of life. Google Wave is the remedy.

What is a wave? A wave is two-way interaction. A wave crashes on shore and draws itself back into the ocean. A wave carries whomever chooses to come along for the ride. Everyone on a wave rides the wave at the same speed and leaves the wave at the same time. The same is true with Google Wave.

Instead of letting the architecture of communication be a thread or web, a ‘wave’ allows for flexibility and prevents the suggested email scenario (CIS) above. Whoever is invited to join in on a ‘wave’ can communicate clearly and effectively without having to worry about spam. If the ‘wave’ you’re in isn’t what you thought it would be, you can opt out once and never be a part of that particular wave again.

2. Google Wave is as real-time as it gets.  The Google Wave team realized that half the time people are chatting together is spent being notified that the other person is typing. Time wasted can be made up by implementing realtime chat. Realtime means real time, character by character updates. All of my spelling errors that I would normally delete and fix for my own pride’s sake get presented in their rawest form. This doesn’t seem like much of a feature, but believe me, it helps a lot. In the real world, people don’t sit around talking one after another. There’s a lot going on at the same time. The real-time interaction found in Google Wave simulates that perfectly, allowing me to understand and respond to what my friends are saying way before they finish typing it.

3. Google Wave is a collaborator’s dream.  We’ve all worked in teams before, but it’s generally harder to work together with more than one person over the web. Sure, you can video conference or screen share but that’s typically one on one. If you’re working on a project together (slideshow, spreadsheet, or document), multiple people can edit and refine the project in realtime and no time is wasted. If you’re working with someone who types in a foreign language, Google Wave can translate in realtime so the language barrier becomes a non-issue. With Google Wave, you’ve got the tools to help you finish the job, faster.

4. Google Wave is just getting started.  There are a ton of bugs right now but the potential is clearly evident.  Developers are creating productivity add-ons, games and god knows what else as you read this. We’re nowhere near seeing a complete version of Google Wave yet, but once this thing hits the general public, it will change the web as we know it.

If you want to find out more, go here: http://wave.google.com