Google Wave Invites, the new zucchini

Google Wave, there's plenty to go around!

Google Wave invites have very quickly gone from being a hot commodity that seemingly everyone in the world wanted, to being something that is being offered by lots of people to all of their friends, and the friends aren't exactly taking them up on it.

This tweet, I thought, summed it up nicely: methinks Google Wave invites have become the new zucchini....... 

They say in small towns, the only time people lock their cars is in August and September to prevent friends from giving them a zucchini from the garden.

I wrote before that this point was coming, it just got here more quickly than I thought. The problem, of course, is that Wave is just too new, and is also just not ready yet. People who are accustomed to Google products that work lightning fast and have a more-or-less intuitive user interface are finding that Wave is slow, buggy, and more than a bit mysterious.

And Google Wave is all about communication, and a lot of people don't really like to communicate these days. They just like to shout.

Now that people who want to try Wave are trying it, the hard part is that they don't always have people to communicate with. A couple weeks ago that was because friends didn't have invites. Now the problem is that Wave users invite their friends, and the friends don't pick up the invitations.

Does this mean Wave is doomed? I don't think so. There are enough people using it now, especially coders, who will quickly grow frustrated with one aspect or another of the way Wave works, or doesn't work. Because Wave is open source, those people will have the ability to go and fix what it is they don't like. They can then publish that fix, and writers like me will find it, publicize it, and then Wave will be a bit better.

Also the Wave team will work very hard, I'm sure, to keep working on Wave, making it more stable, faster, etc. If those things happen, we'll all be using Wave in the next couple of years.

Stay tuned to this Examiner for all the latest on developments that make Wave easier and better.

If you have a news tip or story idea about Wave, well, I'm like a waiter: I live on the tips. Contact me on Sco.tt, or in Wave on "scodtt" or via Twitter using the button below.
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