What comes Next : Google Wave

Google Wave, a new type of communication tool, was unveiled at the Google IO conference end of May 2009. A combination of email, instant messaging, and many other collaborative features, this new application will be available to the public later this year. Additionally, Google plans to make the application Open Source.

“A Wave is a single shared space where two or more users can exchange real time dialogue, photos, videos, maps and documents in what we call a Wave. Everyone can reply to a Wave, people can come and go and you can drag and drop information from all over the web.”

Everyone uses email and instant messaging on the web now, but imagine if you could tie those two forms of communication together and add a load of functionality on top of it. At its most fundamental form, that’s essentially what Wave is.

You start a wave with any message or photo or whatever, and you bring people into the discussion, and then they can bring other people in as well (unless you block it or start kicking people out) so it’s as public or private as you want it to be.

It’s easy to see why Google would jump in here—real-time is the next ‘wave’ of the Internet and everybody’s been obsessed with it since Twitter took off. Not only does Wave elevate the collaborative and conversational aspect of real-time, Google is making it Open Source, which prompt many application developers to contribute their apps, making Wave an exponentially growing success, much like what happened with Apple’s iTunes AppStore or with Google Maps.

Google Wave is already generating a lot of buzz, and for good reason: it is potentially changing the way we look at a whole range of (now individual, not integrated) applications.

One of the most interesting extensions of Google Wave is ‘Twave’, a Twitter extension for Google Wave. The integration makes sense: Google Wave and Twitter are both forms of real-time communication, so why not bring them together? A ‘Twave’ gives you a full stream of your Twitter Stream within Google Wave. Not only can you see tweets, but you can manage them like you would email, with replies, archiving, and even Google Wave’s awesome playback feature.

Tweety lets you sign in to Twitter, read tweets from your friends and post a new tweet directly from Wave – in fact, you create a new wave that just happens to be a tweet as well.

You can also search the Twitter timeline for tweets that include a particular phrase and save these searches in a Wave. You can even continually search and whatever you are interested in will just pop into your Wave inbox. Wave uses the same Avatar look-n-feel Twitter is using, so the Twitter users that you see in the list of people you’re following look like other Wave members even though they may not have Wave accounts.

If Google wants to compete, head-to-head, with Twitter and Facebook, Wave is the perfect start. It may not be a competitor when it first becomes publicly available, perhaps because the merging of documents, feeds, photos, e-mail, instant messaging, event planning, and other features is likely to seem so unfamiliar to users. It will likely take time before would-be users really understand what Wave does and can be used for. But it may be months, not years before users catch on. Then Wave will get a more public face–documents, chats, IMs, etc.–to be shared with everyone on your contact list or the world at-large and Wave does everything Facebook and Twitter do. And more.

It is very likely this will happen: Wave could finally provide the compelling experience users have been seeking through all these separate social networking applications that have become popular today.

For months there have been rumors that Google would buy one of the big social network players. With Wave almost ready to release, there is really no need to spend a lot of money buying a company that still has to make revenue, when you have the platform available, that is already monetized and potentially absorbs all social networking apps. After all, Google already has a built-in, advertising-based business model that customers understand, while Twitter and Facebook are still looking for ways to generate revenue from their users.

Tags: Google, Open Source, Real-Time, Twave, Wave