Initial Thoughts on Google Wave
The blogosphere and tech media have been abuzz over the past 24 hours about Google’s new communication platform, Wave. It’s essentially a new way to communicate online that Australian creators Lars and Jens Rasmussen (brought us Google Maps) position as e-mail and IM if they were invented today.
To sum it up, Wave is a way of organizing online conversations that mash up e-mail, IM, and Web search. There are neat features that bring these together and document the course and evolution of conversations in terms of what was said and who joined the thread (or wave). This will put a whole new face on group e-mails and social event planning.
In that way, there are local implications for Wave that enter the territory forged by Center’d (though Center’d has recently diversified its product — good move). Like many other areas Google enters, this could be good news (awareness) or bad news (competition) for Center’d or others that more or less “live” in this space, such as evite.
Much more to be said … in due time.
As much as anything, I think Google is hoping that companies like Center’d will embrace Wave and build great local, sharing applications around it.