What's All The Fuss About Google Wave Anyway?

You’ve probably heard people talk about Google Wave being a game-changer, a disruptive product, or maybe even as an email killer. But while keywords and phrases like these grab people’s attention, they don’t explain why or how Google Wave could be a paradigm-shifter. In this article, we explore these questions by highlighting some of Google Wave’s most unique and promising features. By exploring these features, we can better understand the potential of this new technology.

1. Wiki Style Functionality

The feature: While Google Wave works a lot like email or IM, there is a huge difference: you can edit not only your messages, but the messages of anybody within your wave. You can reply to messages within a conversation string and reorganize conversations.

Why it’s game-changing: There was a perfect example of how this changes communication during Google’s demo of the product. A group of people are trying to plan a group dinner, and want to see who can come or not. In email, you have a string of emails with yes or no, which can get messy.

In Wave, you can edit the original message with a section with who can or cannot go. Replies can be made within a conversation string, rather than at the end, making conversations a great deal easier to track.

Next week we talk about the 2nd feature that makes Google Wave rock - Wave Extensions...