This seems to be a frequent comment, which completely underscores why Wave failed.
Wave's sophistication was in it's "protocol-ish" nature, with more in common with SMTP than with "Email".
Of course telling end users how cool SMTP is by providing an ugly, slow email client is going to have predictably bad results; which is exactly what happened to Wave.
I would argue that Facebook's new "thing" is the opposite of Google's Wave; it is a slick finish on a cobbled-together collection of communication mechanisms instead of a robust general-purpose collaboration protocol with a shoddy "alpha-class" UI.
Unfortunately guess which approach typically gains commercial success?
At it's core, Wave was trying to attempt the same basic thing: bringing together all your communication into a single pipeline. Facebook is doing that exactly same thing. The difference here is that they are polishing the UI and the backend is incomplete, whereas Wave's backend was fairly complex and the UI (merely the client) was more a technology preview then the actual technology.
Aside: Google's Wave UI really was just a technology preview. It wasn't the product. People are confused by this (and rightly so), but it's not what made Wave awesome. The UI was merely what was added on top of the protocol so they had something they could show to the press.
Google failed Wave in that it made it out to be a different product. People confused Google Wave the UI with Google Wave the protocol.
Basically, Google should have made Wave apart of Gmail like Facebook is doing by making their messaging system apart of the default UI people are already used to.
I don't understand... you're saying Google Wave wasn't Google Wave? Google Wave is actually a product that brings communications together, but Google Wave wasn't Google Wave, Google Wave was just a technology preview?
How exactly did you find out about Google Wave and how it differs so much from Google Wave?
I'm going to assume your not just being purposely obtuse and actually curious.
Google Wave was two things: a protocol and a UI. The UI was merely a way to preview the protocol. The protocol was awesome, the UI not so much. People made the assumption that the UI was what Google was pushing, when the reality was, the UI was merely a way to demonstrate the protocol. Unfortunately, both the UI and the protocol shared the same name.
I understand the distinction between the protocol and the product, but neither was "bringing together all your communication into a single pipeline". That's your wishful thinking about where they could've taken the product, and something they never showed any intention of doing. All the protocol really does is offer a way to do concurrent realtime editing of documents.
No, it was far more than that. Real time document collaboration was a small part. Real time chatting was another big part. Comment tracking on blogs. Watch the demo again and you'll see. If you think it was just document editing you are mistaken.
Yes and no. The beta was to move everyone to the Wave UI. They could have/should have built the Wave protocol into Gmail. In this case, Wave really was beta, and not a working beta like Gmail had been. I think that was the problem. People saw the Wave UI and assumed that was the end product.
Basically, Facebook is doing what Google should have done, baking the new stuff into the existing UI set.
This is more Twitter and MSN territory than Gmails's.
I feel that there has been some space for a MSN replacement for a while. Microsof lack of innovation of MSN is a sign. (Wave tried to get it but failed though)
