GoogleWave: In Theory It Seems To Be A Great Idea; In Practice Google Launched 1000 Ideas
I recently have been working with GoogleWave and as fascinating as it seems in practice it appears to be very hard to manage. Waves that are public are subject to all Wavers' input. Now this is not a bad thing, the more participation the better. For example, if one enters a problem/conversation or document to review, collectively speaking, the more eyes on the issue the more inaccuracies are exposed with the problem, conversation or document overall. The result is the participants can discuss, traverse and provide solutions.
Overall, the GoogleWave is open source for content and as a result, the truth always bubbles up. If that error is in software code, legitimacy in authoring of documents, events, historical accounts, discussions on governmental decrees/treaties/laws etc... The more eyes, the more exposure and truth can be set free...
However, following a GoogleWave over a week with 100 people or more engaging through their input of words, plugins, links, images, makes it very difficult for anyone to come up to speed quickly and comprehend the Wave. Complaining about forums for loss of meaning over weeks of input has nothing on the confusion above the GoogleWave.
Further, most people whom have listened to the GoogleGuys explain the GoogleWave during demonstrations hear one thing loud and clear "GoogleWave" is complicated!! That makes it "Dead on Arrival". Its not ready, too many plugins, too many authors and not enough bandwidth. There is only two positive take aways from the current state of the GoogleWave, what it will become, and where it will lead us. The success GoogleWave will achieve will be in the future and a different beast than what was unleashed in October.
So, what do you do? Well, GoogleWave is here, and its good, its young and under experiment. It is good because Google believes, funds and houses the GoogleWave for the research good it brings them and the users at large. Clearly, this is an exciting tool! its not going to go away, its certainly going to morph.
Morphing into a tool that may influence in the way humans communicate. The only way, this can be accomplished is using Artificial Intelligence tools picking out relevancy, identifying accuracies/inaccuracies, summarize total/monthly/weekly/daily/etc meaning, identifying the problem domain experts and tone (hostile, angry, healthy, positive, etc) and semantic matching/alerting/following and harvesting the most relevant and accurate content on a subject in as real-time as you can get it!
The google wave bot http://code.google.com/p/wikifier-wave-bot/ http://withwaves.com/ maybe the answer to the list above.
The current problems as I see them are below with the caveat, GoogleWave is young, it's teaching and somethings (1,2,...,n) good will come!
- Bandwidth
- Too many users Too much input
- Too many users Too many plugins
- Irrelevant conversations (BLIPS) from the original context of the Wave
- Topic comprehension about as effective as a Tweet #List
GoogleWave In practice may launch 1000 ships carrying ideas that will succeed and fail in their own right. In any case something is sure to spawn and live that will impact the ways we communicate.