Google Wave

[Shawn Nelson]

http://wave.google.com/

Thoughts? I'm nearly done watching the demo video, starts out like "okay, yet another social networking tool" then they start showing work collaboration and I'm thinking this could be big.

[Patrick Tresch]

Interesting. But will it be possible to have a secured wave if there are some sensitive informations been discussed? What privacy policy? ...

There must be a way of securing information. Otherwise it will be another toy for teenagers...

Patrick

[Karl Gustav H.]

As i understand it, it is open source enough for you to host your own wave server; so you can secure it that way.

[Andrew Walker]

Some cool new ideas coming out. I have to agree with Shawn, this could be very big.

[Justin Harrison]

looks pretty promising!

[Jason Diamond]

thats really freekin cool

[Noah Kadner]

I love google as a search engine but they are not going to make me change from Facebook, especially when they have a history of experimenting with and then totally abandoning social networking constructs, such as:

http://www.lively.com/goodbye.html

When it's been around for 4 years and FB and MySpace disappears I'll reluctantly switch over, otherwise not going to happen for me.

Noah

[Chris Parker]

it's going to be 'live' though

[NateWeaver]

I love google as a search engine but they are not going to make me change from Facebook, especially when they have a history of experimenting with and then totally abandoning social networking constructs, such as:

http://www.lively.com/goodbye.html

When it's been around for 4 years and FB and MySpace disappears I'll reluctantly switch over, otherwise not going to happen for me.

Noah

Not sure what's making you think it's a competitor to FB.

It's being tabled as a replacement for email mostly, but has other uses.

[Noah Kadner]

Not sure what's making you think it's a competitor to FB.

It's being tabled as a replacement for email mostly, but has other uses.

Hmm- not sure you have seen this page. Looks like Facebook (actually looks like Flock to be more accurate) with a tiny bit of 'work collaboration' thrown in to try and distinguish itself:

http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html

-Noah

[NateWeaver]

Hmm- not sure you have seen this page. Looks like Facebook (actually looks like Flock to be more accurate) with a tiny bit of 'work collaboration' thrown in to try and distinguish itself:

http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html

-Noah

Aha. Visually I suppose it resembles somewhat with the rounded corner icons, etc.

When you have an AWFUL lot of time to kill, watch the introduction video on Youtube. They spend over an hour showing the broader points, and some cool details.

In short, it looks like an awesome way to avoid work email cluster-kcufs where large amounts of mail are going back and forth trying to keep people in the loop over small issues.

Instead of a POP mail server or an IMAP mail server, you would have a Wave server storing "waves" which are message threads. You add recipients which then get the "message", and they reply in thread.
Like POP or IMAP email, it's a system that can have both web and program clients, and while Google says they will run a Wave server anybody can use, they will open-source the server so any organization can run their own. In addition, multiple Wave servers will be able to pass waves to other servers, just like email works now.

[I Bloom]

Interesting. But will it be possible to have a secured wave if there are some sensitive informations been discussed? What privacy policy? ...

There must be a way of securing information. Otherwise it will be another toy for teenagers...

Patrick

Uh oh, you've crossed into my no FUD zone.

I think you are misunderstanding. Since you determine who can participate in each wave, and each wave itself is contained in a particular server you will only have a security issue if someone on a wave is on a server that is compromised. So if every user is on wave.google.com than the entire wave or wavelet is as secure as your gmail account. If one user is on google and another on wave.reduser.net for example than the entire wave is as secure as google or reduser.

So if your company hosts it's own wave server, and you do a wave with just people who have accounts with your company the blips themselves never leave your server.

Dismissing this idea.... file that under not a good plan.

IBloom

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Its modularity is its greatest strength and weakness.

For years I've been saying that Facebook is just Flicker, Twitter and MySpace tied together into one site and that google should create an aggregator for yourself.

But without a unified profile to tie it all together and supply contact information I think it's too modular to be attractive.

Facebook works because everyone is on it. If your friends don't have flickr accounts than it would be annoying to handle photos.

What they need is something like Microsoft's Passport system or Facebook's connect login to tie it all together into one unified but modular database.

[I Bloom]

Its modularity is its greatest strength and weakness.

For years I've been saying that Facebook is just Flicker, Twitter and MySpace tied together into one site and that google should create an aggregator for yourself.

But without a unified profile to tie it all together and supply contact information I think it's too modular to be attractive.

Facebook works because everyone is on it. If your friends don't have flickr accounts than it would be annoying to handle photos.

What they need is something like Microsoft's Passport system or Facebook's connect login to tie it all together into one unified but modular database.

How about an existing email account? Like gmail for example.

If your photos on flickr were also on facebook, and visa versa you wouldn't much care. You might use both. It's because there is no federation that you feel like you need to choose.

IBloom

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Yeah I don't mind my gmail being the "anchor" I just think it needs to ensure that a tag of you in flickr needs to be accessible through twitter etc.

The problem is that then you immediately start getting into rights/privacy management which is really all that facebook does. Tie together services under a single identity and access management system.

It's a privilege management system. Google would need to offer a similar functionality as an API for wave providers to maintain one unified control panel.