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Got Google Wave invite? Preview opens today; don't call it "Beta"
The long-awaited Google Wave collaboration tool is open for 100,000 invited beta -- sorry: preview -- users. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers hope they get their invitations to the party, but will they waive their rights to privacy?
Google's Lars Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon update us:
Starting Wednesday, ... we'll be sending out more than 100,000 invitations to preview Google Wave. ... Since first unveiling the project back in May, we've focused almost exclusively on scalability, stability, speed and usability. Yet, you will still experience [problems]. There are also still key features of Google Wave that we have yet to fully implement.
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Despite all this, we believe you will find that Google Wave has the potential for making you more productive when communicating and collaborating. ... We use it ourselves everyday for everything from planning pub crawls to sharing photos, managing release processes ... to writing design documents. In fact, we collaborated on this very blog post with several colleagues in Google Wave.
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Happy waving!
Michael Calore bites:
Google Wave is a web-based application that marries multiple forms of communication, including chat, mail and wikis, into a unified interface. ... Everything inside Wave happens in real time: You can even see a comment being made as the person is typing it, character by character.
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Wave solves a unique problem for web users as we deal with the proliferation of web-based collaboration tools and real-time communications services. On one side, you have cloud-based document sharing, photo sharing, wikis and other tools for collaboration. Then there are services built for real-time communication chat is an obvious one, but other services like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed ... also aim to make real-time sharing a bigger part of our online experience.
Alexei Oreskovic adds:
On Wednesday, Google will invite more than 100,000 people to begin using Wave, its new hybrid messaging-social networking-online collaboration tool. ... It may be the hottest ticket in cyberspace. ... Scarcity is a powerful marketing tool (remember the prized Gmail invitations a few years ago?).
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Each Wave preview user will also get the privilege of nominating 8 other people to use Wave, since like any network-based service, Waves value and usefulness increases the more friends, family and colleagues are on-board.
Ben Parr tells us how to get an invite:
And while weve received our fair share of questions about Googles newest product, ... one keeps popping up time and time again: how do I get an invite to Google Wave?
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Google put up a request form for Wave invites not long after Wave was announced. Most of the invites arriving tomorrow will go to people on that list. ... [And] some paying users of Google Apps will get accounts. ... So if you dont get an invite, ... you still have hope. Youll probably have to beg someone for an invite, though.
But Jon Newton makes an unfortunate pun, given recent events in the Pacific:
Everything Google does is designed with one purpose in mind: to make Google even more powerful than it is already.
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Will Google Wave eventually turn into Google Tsunami?
And IBM's Todd "Turbo" Watson sounds miffed about the attention Google's getting:
Meanwhile, back at the IBM Collaboration ranch, IBM Lotus has been gaining ground on the collaboration front through the delivery and adoption of real products our customers can use today.
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IBM momentum in the collaboration space is being driven by the continued success of Lotus Notes and Domino against Microsoft Exchange; Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr against Microsoft SharePoint; and the millions of businesses and individuals that are using Lotus Symphony.
Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him as @richi on Twitter, or richij on FriendFeed, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itblogwatch@richij.com.
