Google’s Badly Marketed Wave
December 12th, 2009 by Julia Bolotina
It sounds like the perfect advertising campaign: tell people you’ve built the new generation of [insert product name here], and make them wait for an invite to use it. In theory, it’s the perfect way to build up hype. This must be what was going through Google’s marketing people’s heads when they chose this as the strategy for marketing Google Wave.
So what’s Wave? Well, that’s part of the problem.
Wave is Google’s new product. From my experiences with it, I would say it’s part email, part messenger, and huge chunk wiki. As their horribly-named video host, Dr. Wave, explains, instead of sending copies of the same message around (like we do with email), there is only one copy of the message, which anyone can access, modify, and comment on. Like wiki in email form. It’s a brilliant concept.
The problem is, Google seems to see it as “the next generation of email” which it’s decidedly not, since it’s incompatible with other email services like hotmail or even gmail (i.e. you can’t send a wave to a non-wave address, or send an email to a wave address). Plus, marketing it through a limited release means that people fish for invites over Twitter and Facebook, and so end up equating it with social media, which it is also definitely not.
When I and some friends got invites, we played around with it, did everything it was capable of, had fun editing and sabotaging each other’s messages for a bit, and then got really really bored. Wave is an amazing tool for collaboration, for building, editing, and finalizing anything that involves a group of people – whether a document or just party plans – but pretty useless for anything else. It should have been targeted towards areas where collaboration is important, like universities, small businesses, even media outlets. Instead, it’s being marketed to the social media crowd. I just hope this brilliant tool doesn’t fall by the wayside, a victim to yet another bad marketing campaign.
Of course, maybe you disagree. Try it out for yourself! The first 10 people to comment will get an invite (just include a gmail address in the “address” blank; do NOT put your email in the comment itself.) Tell us what you think!
December 14th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I think you have this a little backwards.
The current version of Googlewave is a BETA release, and many of the features are still in development, hence the limited release. Many developers are still working on gadget plugins that will hopefully add to the collaboration experience.
The initial wave of invites that got sent out were specifically to targeted at developers (and people that were interested in providing feedback) who had signed up to their email list. From there, various pools of developers started inviting their peers to help assist with further bug testing and development. Their targeted release has been aimed at developers from the very start.
Somewhere along the road, some of these “average joe” people capitalized on their access to invites by selling them on eBay, getting people to RT their twitter statuses to boost their popularity, clicking ads and other ridiculous things. So this extra hype from the the shortage of invites, is a plus for GoogleWave and not necessarily what they were aiming for in the first place. (Though I could be wrong).
However, I totally agree that it’s great tool for collaborations. Already using it for a whole bunch of my projects.
December 14th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
ahh I would love to try this out for myself! to be honest though that interface looks a bit of a nightmare…
December 14th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
The interface is actually not that bad. It looks crowded on the picture, but you can choose to minimise any window. It’s a really well built program on the whole.
January 5th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
i dont need an invite already have one.
its so laggy. maybe coz i have a shit laptop but yeah i agree.
perhaps if they upped the compatability as u mentioned?
bear in mind its still beta when they take it off the beta and make it accesible perhaps itll be better? im not sure.
annnnyway so far ive come to think of wave as nothing more than instant message gangbanging.
January 5th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
LOL @ “instant messaging gangbang.”
January 9th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
True, one just has to take a look at “with: public” to cringe at the spammers and nasties in action.
But the “universities, small businesses, even media outlets” are taking note too. My subspecialty is interested in using Wave as an electronic health record.
For more info, see my blog.
-Elizabeth at Hospital Songs (0T9, @pqimparfait)
January 11th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
The beta invite concept is the same they used for gmail, and that seemed to work for them. The major drawback I feel to wave at the moment is the lack of stuff to do. Most people only know if at all a few other people on wave and it is at this point a novelty rather than a tool for practical usage. It needs to reach a critical mass of users first. I’ve read somewhere can’t remember where, that wave will ultimately integrate with email and at the point it will def be a step forward. They haven’t done the integration yet since its still beta and email integration would mean instant bombardment of users and more disastrously reg email spam.