Google Wave – A Lot Of Hype Over Nothing New

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Google Wave is just a glorified threaded message board. Okay, so it’s a threaded message board with “real time” and widgets. . . ooooo. . .

Threaded message boards have been around forever, adding a couple bells and whistles doesn’t make them suddenly new and fantastic. In fact my first experience online back in the 90s involved the use of a class held on a threaded message board called Caucus. It’s nothing new. Though, I admit, threaded message boards are nice.

It’s nice to have a hosted conversation. A place where everyone meets, either at the same time or asynchronously, but that’s not the one size fits all solution to messaging. Sometimes an inbox and a conversation that can reach out to wherever you happen to be, whatever level of device you happen to be using, is the right solution. Email reaches more devices, because email is light and malleable. Email displays on simple monochrome phones to giant graphics editing ready computers.

“But wait,” you say, “It’s got this cool feature, and that cool feature, and you can start your own wave server, and your waves on your wave server can be shared with people on other wave servers and and and. . .”

That’s all well and neat, and more than likely useful, but the fact is, Google Wave is heavier than email. Light weight and malleable will always be needed. Email will always be around. Google wave will be a nice service, that some people use, just like some people use message boards now. It’ll be nice, it’ll be around, it’ll be as cool as any message board, but it’s not really a big deal.

Threaded message boards have never been a contender to email. The glorified threaded message board that is Google Wave will not replace email.

If I’m wrong here, just let me know, but be sure to give me a convincing reason or three. If you agree with me, I’d love to hear from you as well, just a leave a note in the comments.

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Tagged as: Communication, Google, Google Wave, GoogleWave, hype, Internet forum, message boards, nothing new, Tools