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?
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?