Google Wave... My first (GOOD) impressions

28 October 2009

Originally uploaded by Ric e Ette

Here it's, finally I've got an invitation to use Google Wave, the new Google communication tool.
Since the announcement last may, I'm like everybody, waiting for it.

Finally, it has been released on 1st of October, for few lucky people that then had invitations to send to their friends, etc...

First reactions were not enthusiastic, especially by famous blogger Robert Scoble.
Scoble explains here and here that Google wave is over hype and very unproductive because of all the noise it generates.

Scoble explains that wave is as nonproductive as email, and even worse

Google Wave adds many of these unproductive problems and then lays another few unproductive things on top...

It is noisy, but the noise often happens way down in a wave deep in your inbox...

This is far far worse than email. (New email always shows up at the top of my inbox, where Google Wave can bring me new stuff deep down at the bottom of my inbox)...

And, worse, when I look at my Google Wave page I see dozens of people all typing to me in real time. I don’t know where to look and keeping up with this real time noise is less like email, which is like tennis (hit one ball at a time) and more like dodging a machine gun of tennis balls. Much more mentally challenging.

So finaly, I could try iy !
Is it as bad as Scoble says lt ?

Honestly NO, and even I'd say, Google wave is GREAT, and very promising.

Here're the main reasons :

• It's nice, and easy to use
  The design is nice, I like to use it.
  Without any explanation, I was able to start a wave and discuss with friends

• It's real-time You see what the other person is writing without waiting for this "enter" key. This is very nice and improve the interaction. I often work with other people located on the other side of the planet. Chat is a very good tool to discuss, and build solutions, we use it everyday.
  The real-time aspect of wave will be a real added value.

• You can structure the discussion In "normal" chat tool, what you write come in a list, one after the other.
  In wave, you can add your comment at the good place. Then, the discussion is structured, with main stream and sub discussion. Quite powerful

• Traceability of discussionsAll the discussions are kept as waves that you can archive.

• Wave is an open platformThe "extension" notion seems to be very powerful, and open for developpers, this will bring new nice features very soon.
  As I see it, people will build collaborative solutions based on wave platform. Such a solution, used in the context of a small team will be very powerful.