Wave is Google's attempt at creating a new communications platform. They call it a new way to share information. What it seems to me is that it's a combination of instant messaging and email. The interface is very "email-ish". You have contacts, folders, an inbox and all that kind of stuff. In your inbox you see "waves" that you're a part of. A wave is kind of like a conferenced chat. You can have any number of participants and everyone in the wave can see what's going on either in real time or when they log on later. You can also drag and drop things like pictures and youtube videos into waves and share them with the participants.
If you use Gmail, it's all pretty familiar feeling but at the same time it's different enough that in the short time I've had access, I've not really been sure what to do with it. I think like any social network, the more people that you know that are using it, the greater it's value will be to you and that's maybe one of the inherent flaws. No other company has a "wave" product. You can get an email address from any number of different places and I can email you all day long no matter if we have different names after the "@" sign. If you're going to do waves though, it's Google or nothing and there's a lot of people out there that don't want to use Google that unless they allow outside "wave" accounts, the whole thing might never take off.
If anyone's interested in checking it out, I have 8 invites. Send me an email or facebook message with your email address and I'll be happy to get you in on the party.
Have a good Tuesday.
--Paul
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