Review of Google’s new API.

Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator

Ever since Google announced the development of the Wave API there has been much speculation and mixed reviews of the tool.  Well my friends, you can now end the guessing games you have been playing, for I have been one of the lucky marketers to get an invite to check it out. I have been playing around with Wave for about a week now. It takes a bit to get used to just like anything new, but finding and discovering cool features or shortcuts is the fun part! I am not normally one to geek out on new technologies, but I must say I am very impressed by Wave even in its beta stage.  It’s like Gmail, Gchat and Google Docs combined AND on steroids.  With email, one person sends out one copy to many people.  The difference with Wave is that is it a real hosted conversation, meaning there is one copy and many contributors.  Google explains wave as a real-time, online communication and collaboration tool. This API is taking the whole social community/networking platform to a whole new level.  A Wave is a document and conversation.  It is great for organizing events, taking meeting notes, or brainstorming on group projects.  You can reply and edit anywhere in a Wave.  If changes are highlighted if you have closed out Wave and reopened it. The Playback feature allows you to review step by step changes to the Wave.  Another cool feature is the extensions/robots you can add to your Wave. There are extensions that can publish your Waves on blogs or your Twitter account, and many more soon to be developed.

Pros:

• No ad space.
• Drag and drop files or images from the desktop into the Wave for the other users to see instantly. Takes only seconds to download and view!
• Gadgets like the yes/no/maybe, maps, and video chat. This makes for a more interactive and fun social environment.

Cons:

• You can see what people are typing as they write. I don’t particularly care about seeing people try to form their thoughts into words and retype their misspellings – I’ll take the finished product.
• You have to hit a “done” button when you want to submit your message and not the ENTER key. I think this is not as efficient, and after instant messaging for 10+ years, hitting the ENTER key after a comment is ingrained in my brain.
• Not many people have access to it.

Once adoption occurs, I am sure the creating of ad space will be next to follow.  But this is a great tool for businesses and friends. I am very impressed by the sheer creativity and talent of the creators of Wave. Two thumbs up Google!