Google Wave is not social media. The confusion is understandable. Ever since Facebook went mainstream, there hasn’t been a popular online innovation that didn’t involve social media in some way. Social media created a brand new form of communications that was indirect but semi-private, not directed at anyone in particular, but not quite broadcasted, either.
The newness sparked a burst of creativity that’s still going. Wave is explicitly about going back to direct and private communications. It’s just a new tool for an old job, and it has nothing to do with social media. So let’s go easy on the hype.
Google’s point is that we’ve been doing it with the same technology - email - since 1971, and it’s getting a little silly. Emails work like passing notes in the classroom.
Each email gets folded up into a little package with an address, then is passed along mail servers until they reach the recipient. It’s flexible, it’s straightforward and it’s light. It was designed this way so that we could keep using it even when huge chunks of network failed. The downside to this simple data structure is that 38 years later, we’re still losing attachments and getting CSI on those six levels of quoted texts to figure out who’s yelling at us.
Wave’s solution is to flatly walk away from the whole system. To use Wave, you’ll need to log into a Wave server, which will connect with other Wave servers. Despite trying to take over email’s role, Wave’s underlying structure bears no resemblance to email at all. It's just an instant messaging system that organises threads like emails. From the user’s perspective, Wave is just an upgrade, not a revolution. They’ll get smarter threading, live chat, multimedia integration, meta-tagging, and more.
The IM-email convergence will be particularly interesting for users in Asia, who have traditionally preferred IM. The chat/email hybrid pitch will help draw in more Asian users at first, but the flexibility could soon backfire. Chat and email have very different etiquettes, so what rules, if any, apply? Do you have to excuse yourself when you walk away from your desk while waving? Is bad spelling okay? Expect grumpiness from early adopters as they revise the netiquette for Wave.
Marketers will have the same headaches, finding the right place for themselves in a space that’s more instant, more interactive and more intimate. If you’re going to experiment, focus on Wave’s multimedia integration - like direct email marketing, but richer. Experimenting with Wave’s “chat” side is risky, since direct marketing in IM using robots is already considered worse than spam. It’s an ill-defined space with no rules yet - which means that everything you do is likely to be considered wrong and obnoxious. Expect the first marketers to try to get chatty on Wave to get slammed.
The other upshot for marketers is the same as always when it comes to Google: datamining. Like gmail chat, the point is to keep users in the same system as much as possible, so that Google can mine from a bigger pool of data. But unlike gmail chat, users will pick up on existing Waves where they left off.
The same enriched data structure that allows Wave to keep track of conversations, play them back and filter them will also add to AdSense’s understanding of the conversations. Waves will provide well-structured context around what's been said. Throw in some meta-tags and the possibility of mining data across different Wave users, and you’ve got a whole new infrastructure for Google to get inside your head.
This article was originally published in 3 December 2009 Winter issue of Digital Media.