Google Wave is not simple, and that's the point

Google Wave is complicated, but jokes are easy

There's a new joke site up making fun of Google Wave that is even making the Google Wave people giggle. It's called Easier To Understand Than Wave.

Just from the title and one screen grab, you get the joke: The US Tax Code is easier to understand than Google Wave. Not crazy funny, but an easy little poke to take at a time when Wave is getting a lot of attention in certain very geeky circles.

The joke and the site are indeed very easy to understand. The joke site is clearly built by someone who's spent a bunch of time on Hot or Not because it uses the exact same idea: A choice is presented to the user, the user makes a choice and is rewarded for that with the results of the first choice and the next choice front-and-center.

The founder of the original Hot or Not, who was recently in Denver, has always credited the undeniable success of his site to the ease of use. He said that after he launched he discovered another site that had actually launched before his that had a similar concept of rating other people based on looks alone, but that it required several more clicks to get from one picture to another.

Simplicity works if you are making simple jokes, or sites where you are asked to rank how hot some random person is.

If you want to change the way communication and collaboration happen on the internet, well, it's not so simple.

Now that a few more invites are starting to trickle out, some more reviews are coming out about Google Wave, and they are not all great. Some are calling it too complicated, and others just don't see how it will be useful.

Several have made the point that the reviews sound a lot like the reviews for Twitter in the early days, which is just a version of tryiing to figure out who really understands the future.

I think these bad reviews are actually good news, and will give the Wave team time to really work on the product and ignore the critics and just listen to the people who do use the product, which leads to one legitimate criticism.

That complaint, one that I've felt myself, is that because so few people have access to Wave, it's difficult to use it for communication because you don't have anybody really close to your circle using it. With benefit of hindsight, instead of having individuals get access the Wave team should have encouraged whole teams to apply. All of them would have had to confirm to get in, and then when a team did get it they could start using it all at once, rather than piecemeal as is happening now.

I've been hearing stories about how one person on a team will get it, and everyone just stands over that person's shoulder and is, well, underwhelmed in part because of jealousy but in large part because it's hard to visualize it in action.

So, yes, Google Wave is complicated.

It's like the old quote from Mencken, "There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong."

The solution for complicated and broken communication over the internet is not easy, and that's pretty much the point. The solution will fix much of what is broken, but it will not be simple.

I will be reading lots about Wave and reporting here about the best, but I am open to all suggestions about what aspects of Wave to cover. If you have a tip, well, I'm like a waiter: I live on the tips. If you want to reach me you can do so on my personal blog, Scott, or via Twitter using the button below.