Google Wave Popularity: It's No Twitter

Mark Pilgrim sums it up nicely.

With a bit of down time surrounding turkey dinners, I have a hunch that a lot of people are finally going to take their Google Wave Invite for a spin.

They may not like it.

I've written a lot about Google Wave, spent a lot of time trying to use it, and watching longer videos than I ever have before. (The latest one, here, and below, does a nice job explaining the allure of Wave.) I'm excited about the future of Wave as a platform for really improving communications.

But as this tweet points out so nicely, a lot of people don't really like communicating with other people.

Here's an analogy for Thanksgiving week:

Twitter is not a good communication tool. It's a tool for blasting out a chicken-nugget of information, and if people read or respond in any way well, whatever. That's not the point.

That is not Wave. Wave is designed for five-course meals with lots of good wine, too.

It's easy to imagine eating a few chicken nuggets sitting alone, but hard to imagine a great turkey-stuffing-pie-etc. feast without other people and conversation and genuine interaction.

Unfortunately, people seem to be moving away from real communication. They just want to eat a few chicken nuggets and go to bed early so they can wake up for "DOOR BUSTER" sales at 4 a.m. Egad.

Now I do think that in some cases people really do need and want to communicate -- meaning they talk AND listen -- and when that is the case I think Google Wave will evolve into a tool that does that very well. It's not there yet because it's just not soup yet. Remember, Google Wave is not "beta," and it's not even "alpha." It's a developer preview. So if you are not a coder and not someone who wants to handle having to learn a whole new set of commands on an interface that may break several times in any given hour, well, just hang on. (Keep reading this Examiner section, I'll let you know when it's time to dive in.)

Of course, the other reason that this tool is not great for communication right now is that so few people are using it. Invites are much more plentiful than they had been a month ago, but even people who get Google Wave invites aren't really using them all that much. Lack of adoption may be the thing that undermines the whole Wave platform, but I'm not as worried about that in the long-run. (Read more about Google Wave Invites.)

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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