When Google unveiled Wave, they described it as a marriage of e-mail and instant messaging. But to me it looks more like the kind of social network that I’d really like, one where I can exactly target the people with whom I want to share a comment, a photo, or a video.
One of the problems with Facebook is that most of the things you share through it go to everybody you have “friended,” whether those people are relatives, gym buddies, co-workers, or your boss. But few people want to share everything with everyone they know. The best example, of course, is posting pictures of weekend road trips and having your boss see them! But it’s not just a matter of being unintentionally embarrassed. Sometimes you come across a video you know your friends will love, but your relatives just won’t get the joke. Or you want to share a work-related link with professional colleagues, but know that your friends will be utterly bored with it.
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Google Wave is still only a glimmer in Google engineers’ eyes. The company just made the source code available to selected developers. The service is based on HTML5, an open standard that Google initiated. But from the description and early screenshots of the service, it looks like something that could be perfect for sharing content with only the people you choose.
The service’s basic element is called a “Wave,” which can be a simple text message, a collection of photos, a video or other content. Just as in e-mail, you can choose exactly which of your contacts you want to share the Wave with. Those contacts can make comments or ask questions that are seen by the whole group. You can see the new comments in real time or, if you haven’t been paying attention for a while, you can hit rewind and see chronologically how the Wave developed.
It seems to me that each Wave is like a new Facebook page created on the fly to share a specific piece of content with a select group of friends. And that’s the kind of social network that I’d really like to use.
There are other aspects of Wave that seem to directly mimic services like Facebook. Google is also encouraging developers to create extensions that can live in Wave. The extensions are essentially like Facebook apps, except useful. One example would be an extension that would make it easy to send a tweet from Wave.
Just like the hype for the sequel to Transformers, Google Wave is creating a demand and interest that is quite extraordinary. Lets just hope its good as the movie! |
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