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Kudos to Google for understanding this and cutting their losses (relatively) early. I remember reading about their effort to cut down on useless products and focusing on the core search/AdWords/Gmail/etc, this is the effect of that. I really hope Buzz is next.
EDIT: spelling fixed, thanks!
Facebook spams your inbox. They make sure you know that you have an account and that people are trying to reach you (or tell the world about their cat, etc).
With wave, it's silent. There was activity on a wave I was following in January. I found out about it in March. Someone replied to something I said on July 21st. I'm only just finding out now. What kind of a communication tool is that? It's like they're selling a phone that can't ring.
The other UI and social issues were important but weren't fatal. If Google had actually notified users when they got new messages, they would have logged into wave, sent more messages and wave would have lasted longer.
Instead, messages were sent but never read, so Wave lost all the momentum it had.
I, for one, am very dissapointed by this. Even worse I feel somehow partially responsible. I have been a huge proponent of Wave in theory, but even after getting into the early beta I just never found myself /using/ it. I blame this mainly on it lacking the social graph I cared about.. But I thought I could just bide my time and in 5 years it would have taken over. I am starting to feel like I will have to deal with…
I blame it on never understanding the UI, the way it did things, or its usefulness. It's like a chat you can't delete things from, and everyone sees what you type and all your mistakes? And you can post pictures? I just don't get it.
You can even delete other people's blips!
People can only see your mistakes if they're in the wave and looking while you type (ie, "Chat Mode"). If it's used like email (that is, checking it a few times per day), they see only the snapshots of what happened when the "Done" button was pressed.
You can add pictures. You can embed YouTube videos. You can have links.
Honestly, yeah, it takes some getting used to, but once you're used to it, it's no more complicated than Outlook. Personally, I think using Outlook to set up a meeting notice is harder than using Wave.
We started off with a collaborative list of every cue needed during the first run through, and then let that list grow bigger and bigger with inline replys. Wave's built-in media features meant that I could paste mp3's into the space and let the filmmakers hear my work immediately, and then download the file to put into the project. This meant that when it came time to FTP the big, uncompressed files, it was only the finals, which made things a lot easier.
Likewise, collaborating with temp music was a breeze-- the filmmakers even scored a few sections of the film with temp music and then put the video right into the conversation. (No more folders full of giant quicktime files with different scores).
I know that I'm going to miss that experience. Oh well. Perhaps someone will take the open-source'd code from Google and build a better product.
I'm not holding my breath.
Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. Did Google believe that this was going to succeed as a consumer product, à la Facebook? Wave, as it exists today, is a great tool for corporate communications. With the right interfaces, integration, and extensions it could definitely displace Exchange and Lotus Notes. Eventually, as a protocol, it had the potential to transcend email. Maybe Google just hoped W…
It's just a wicked solid tool for meetings and out-of-band document collaboration. I'd love to see it continue. I'm sad it didn't get the adoption they wanted, but I also wonder what they expected when they didn't even really try to integrate it with GMail.
If they could go back and time, exclude Buzz from Gmail but instead add Wave, I think they'd have better success for it.
It's amazing that Google didn't see this.
The idea is excellent, the fail is the lack of 'product'. They should distribute Wave modules that every wordpress or phpbb user can install on their blogs and hook into their own communities... and then Wave will take off.
In fact, I'm kind of surprised that they're killing it, because it felt like a first step with the technology part, with an upcoming second step where they would use said technology. I'm surprised that that was it. I would have expected Google to have plans beyond what Wave is today.
http://www.tee-junction.com/2009/twitter-killer-nerdy-shirts...