About a month or month-and-a-half ago Google released their latest communication platform called Google Wave. When I say released I mean that it was opened in an invite-only mode – yes, you had to be invited to use it. There were a limited number of invitations (100,000 if I’m not mistaken) to be sent out for round 1. On top of that, those 100,000 were eligible to send out to 8 of their friends/contacts. The catch was even if you invited your friends, they were not necessarily going to receive the invitation right away, or even in the next 3 weeks for that matter. In my case, I waited about 2.5 weeks before receiving an invitation…I was a little sad.

It’s now been about 1.5 months since they first let people inside their newest creation. Many of us have recently (for me, November 12th) been given the opportunity to invite 8 of OUR friends too, and to my surprise those friends got their invitations in a matter of hours. This is great news! Are we going to continue to see more and more people allowed to invite their friends, at a speedy rate? I sure hope so – better yet, I’m excited when this gets opened to the public. Right when the first 100,000 invitations went out, people were going crazy to get one, even bidding on ebay!

Now that I’ve been able to connect with several friends, communicating directly over Google Wave, I’d like to briefly talk about the usability. The platform is different, certainly. Like Gmail, it’s not your ordinary email system or chat program. Yes, it has similarities but far more powerful. As you converse, you can have multiple people in a “wave” (or chat) all typing at once without any rules. As someone types a message, you can watch every word they type, even if they erase a little to fix spelling mistakes – it’s mind boggling. On top of that, you can have threaded replies to parts of messages, go back to something said earlier and reply, and far more. In addition to just text, you can add plug-ins or bots which add more functionality such as emoticons, polling, games, maps, and the list goes on.

This may sound really exciting, and it is. Will this really become a popular method of communicating…probably so, but you will not find the majority of people using it because I don’t think it’s user friendly. It’s powerful, maybe too powerful. If you find Gmail confusing…don’t even bother with Google Wave, believe me.

It will be interesting to watch over the next 6 months. Do people adapt it in their activities? Does it replace instant message programs? Keep an eye out.

Yesterday, May 28th, I heard about Google Wave. When I first saw the name (unaware of what it was) my initial reaction was “Another Google service – they’re doing everything!”. Let’s get one thing clear, I think Google has an amazing creative team and ingenious ideas but it’s a bit scary to see them getting into so many services – they’re like Miscrosoft, except more clever and better at being evil (I mean that in a nice way, I think).

Anyway, back on subject.

As my recent post shows, Twitter and Facebook have been gaining some serious momentum. They’re both steadily growing now, stomping on Myspace quickly. The unique communication method that Twitter is about is captivating. Millions now use Twitter and it will continue to grow. Facebook has made some serious changes/improvements over the past couple years that has helped skyrocket its popularity, hence being a bigger catch than Myspace. On top of that, Google has a slew of services that are excellent such as Gmail, document sharing and of course Youtube.

The recent silent display of Google Wave looks quite impressive and eye-catching. It combines the most popular service and social networks with the power of Google’s sharing (documents, youtube, etc..) to one place.

Could this damage Facebook, Twitter, AIM, Yahoo IM, Myspace, and others? I would not be surprised if they are all starting to shake in their pants. This is a POWERFUL communication tool which brings nearly ALL of the tools to one place…

Personally I’m pumped about it, despite not using Google services too much, yet at the same time I’m a little scared. Google seems to have absorbed the idea of having their foot in practically everything. Is that a good thing? If you ask me, I definitely say “I think they’re very creative but they need to relax!”.

What are your thoughts?