Google Wave – what is it all about?

A while ago I recieved a Google Wave invite from a friend who had like 7 or 8 of them. Google Wave invites are not (yet) hard to get as the Spotify invites are. My first thought was that Google Wave was a service like Spotify where you can listen to music online. The word “wave”  made me think of  sound waves. How wrong could I be.

So what is Google Wave all about? I think Googles problem with Google Wave is that it not directly clear what it should be used for. The name is a bit confusing and when you’re in there it is not really obvious at a first glance. Maybe that is why Google made a get-started-video that explains it.

Google Wave is a communication and collaboration tool. It will let people work and communicate around one or more documents. It can be you and your friends, collegues, school project members or people from your local amateur radio club.  When you start a wave (like a project or new document), you decide which people should participate. Anyone of those people can edit any document in the wave, so there is nobody particular “owning” it. You can put links, pictures, video and little gadgets, like yes/no buttons, maps and polls, in the wave. A cool thing is that you can see in real time what the other people in the wave is typing, as they do it.

Google mentions organizing events, group projects, photo sharing, meeting notes, brainstorming and interactive games as a few examples how to use Google Wave.

When the wave is finished it can be exported to blogs, facebook, twitter etc. Google Wave was created by Lars and Jens Rasmussen who also created the Google Maps.

Maybe it’s going to be a hit – maybe not. Is it maybe  too genious? We’ll see…