[nfais-l] Google Wave and Yesterday's Webinar

[Jill O'Neill]

Never let it be said that social media doesn't get the message out! Less
than three hours after we'd completed yesterday's NFAIS Webinar on the topic
of Google Wave, Google announced that it would be ceasing support of the
service as a stand-alone product. Personally, I learned of the tool's demise
through a message on my Facebook wall (Jay ven Eman of Data Harmony), an
email message (Margie Hlava of Access Innovations) and a re-tweeted item in
my Twitter stream (Dave Kellogg of Mark Logic). See the formal announcement
here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html.

 

I have been monitoring follow-up discussions and reactions. 

 

For example, from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, quoted in a story on CNET:

"His comments came at the start of Techonomy, a new conference devoted to
looking at how technology is changing and can change. 

Schmidt said that society really isn't prepared for all of the changes being
thrust upon it. "I think it's time for people to get ready for it." 

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/05/google-ceo-dishes-on-google-wave-verizon-social
-strategy/

 

More from Schmidt, directly on the topic of Wave, quoted at GigaOM:

 

What happened was we liked the UI and we liked a lot of the new features in
it but it didn't get enough traction. So we're taking those technologies and
applying them to new technologies that are not announced. So basically we'll
get the benefits of Google Wave but not as a separate product. It's a very
clever product and we liked it what it could do. We try things and remember
we celebrate our failures. It's absolutely OK to try something very hard,
have it not be successful, take the learning from that and then apply it to
something new. In that sense Wave is a exact analog. Would I have loved
version 1 to be hugely successful and have five gazillion users, absolutely.
As a culture, we don't over-promote products that haven't been announced, we
release it and see what happens. It works, you announce product, you ship
it, initial adoption period, a fall-off, and then a second growth period.
That second growth is a high predictor of what will happen.

 

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/05/google-ceo-dishes-on-google-wave-verizon-social
-strategy/
<http://gigaom.com/2010/08/05/google-ceo-dishes-on-google-wave-verizon-socia
l-strategy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+OmMalik
+(GigaOM)> 

(Note: GigaOm links to a video of Schmidt's commentary. It's 40-minutes
long, but may well be instructive.)

 

>From the New York Times Bits Blog:

 

Wave, which was introduced, to much hype at a conference for Google software
developers in 2009, was conceived of as a collaboration tool housed in a Web
browser. People could use the application to chat, edit documents, videos
and photos, and play games together.

 

But Wave had so many different features that it confused many users, who
never figured out how it worked. Wave also has several competitors, ranging
from Salesforce's Chatter to Jive.

 

One of Wave's major ideas - that the browser is replacing the desktop
computer as the center of people's computing lives - lives on at Google and
is the central tenet of its Web-based Chrome operating system.

 

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/google-kills-wave-its-collaboration
-tool/

 

And my co-presenter from yesterday's Webinar, John Blossom made this
statement with which I fully concur, "Reading the announcement, it's clear
that Wave and Wave-like functionality will make its way into other
platforms. There's a broader picture to look at, namely, how does effective
collaboration in real-time mix with the broader commercial necessity to
field a product that draws users away from competitive products. Wave
doesn't compete with anything directly, expect perhaps wikis on a broad
level. If you take what Buzz, Wave, Sidewiki, Voice and other platforms can
do and put them in a more competitive framework, perhaps you come out ahead.
So although this saddens me, perhaps there's another chapter to the story
that has yet to be told."

 

More commentary from John is on his Second Web blog:
http://www.secondwebbook.com/2010/08/wipeout-google-kills-wave-to-build.html

 

And, finally, an analysis from ReadWrite Web, Why Developers Did Not Adopt
Wave

http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/08/google-waves-demise-has-its-up.php

 

 

 

Jill O'Neill

Director, Planning & Communication

NFAIS

(v) 215-893-1561

(email) jilloneill at nfais.org

 

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