Google Inc. is continuing its potentially disruptive streak with the preview of Google Wave, a collaboration framework that brings together online conversations and documents between “waves” of users. The company is inviting 100,000 people who signed up to try out Wave ahead of its general release. And some are ecstatic to get an invite; others are putting theirs up on eBay.
It’s a hot ticket: Bids for Google Wave invites are already up over $100 in the three-day auction.
Call it social networking, call it unified communications, call it Web conferencing. It’s basically an all-in-one, cloud-based, collaboration and communications platform. Users of Google Wave create postings that can include text, photos, videos, maps, news feeds, widgets and Web site content, and more. Users can reply to posts or edit them, becoming part of a “wave” of participants. The group ends up with essentially a tree of these postings (another kind of wave), which they can talk about via embedded instant messaging, e-mail and blogging capabilities. Other users can see what a participant is typing in near-real time, or can be notified as the posting is updated.
The content also can be easily searched and linked to, while a set of APIs makes it possible to embed a posting into Facebook or other Web sites.
