This week, the team behind the Google Maps announced Google Wave, a hybrid between email, instant messaging, online forums and wikis. Each Wave is a conversation – you can start a wave with any number of participants. A wave is started with an initial message (most likely an email) and participants communicate using instant messaging if they were online. In addition, they can attach documents, embed rich data including maps, documents and other files as well.
Wave, the Google team describes, is what email should be if it was invented now, rather than the 1960s. It takes into account the different forms of communication that we all use nowadays (email, IM) and blends it with the ways that we store data (Wikis, documents). It has potential to offer that much needed structure to collate our communication by topics of conversation, rather than by each message. If successful, it could mean a huge paradigm change in the way that we organize our information. (Head over to Mashable [link] to read a more detail walkthrough of Wave functionality.)
Of course, I’m not the only one getting excited about Wave. In fact, a lot of people are. So excited that there’s even a Dundee Wave Google Group springing up (I’m guessing they’re happy to have non-Dundonians to join in the fun). I’m intrigued as to what type of additional functionality that Google want outside developers to add into it. As far as I can see, the product has so many functions packed in, that it would take end-users a good bit of time to get to grips with using it first – let alone adding extra features.
Do you have any thoughts on how Wave will develop? Please share in the comments.
StartupCafe 
Although its interface is Gmail-like, I still think Google Wave is more of a Sharepoint killer than an evolution of email. Ad-hoc, transient communities are an incredibly useful tool for collaboration, and it’s a land grab from what has traditionally been Microsoft’s patch. (The ability to install local Wave hubs within a business network is an indicator for this.)
I’m looking forward to this taking off!
@ben
I agree. It’s definitely a collaborative tool but I do think that if enough people use wave, then that can seriously challenge email. But that means its *another* communication channel to keep up to date with … after email, twitter, facebook, linkedin, blogs, various RSS feeds, IRC: another channel would just be information overload!