Media Yarn

Google Wave or Google Tsunami?

Last Monday a few of my classmates and I attended a special invite to the Google Technology User Group for a preview of Google Wave. I was itching to find someone with open invites but was happy to hear that everyone who signed up was automatically getting active Wave accounts.

Some of the initial stats were quite impressive so far: .5% of waves are public, the longest wave has 1134 blips, 8% contributed to a public waves, 98% have tried photo uploading. Since I was granted access I’ve been using wave mostly with other wavers and some of my classmates. I still feel however that I cannot get the full experience since my entire network isn’t on Wave yet. In class we use it for sending documents, images, and creative to each other in collective environment. To do so I needed to install gears.

I think the branding choice of Google Wave is quite interesting. Since I’m studying HCI stuff in LCC we recently discussed how some theorists compared innovation to “waves” or the build up of an idea and movement of interaction.

What do you think of “the wave?”