At the beginning of 2009, during a now-famous strategy meeting, Twitter’s executives asked themselves, “Are we building a new Internet?” At the crux of that question was the realization that Twitter “introduced a new form of communication to the world.” Public micro-messages are now everywhere—on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google, Bing, Yahoo, AIM. They are infiltrating every part of the Web, particularly as the backbone of realtime search.
Yes, status updates (which are a form of micro-message) existed before Twitter, but it is the growing public nature of these messages which makes them exciting. For one thing, they need to be public in order to be visible to search engines. But when Twitter and other companies talk about building a new Internet, they don’t mean that 140-character messages are going to replace web pages. Rather it is that these realtime streams are becoming the center of people’s attention on the Web, and sending them off in all different sorts of directions.
These streams are the new Internet not so much because of the micro-content which they contain, but because they are a more efficient means of communication. Remember, the Internet at its core is a communications system. The battle going on now between Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others is to control this new realtime layer of communications on the Internet. Each one wants to be driving the micro-message bus. → Read More
This morning, Google is making a slight update to Wave to help users unclog their inbox from public waves. Previously, you could see public waves in your inbox, which was fairly annoying. Now for a wave to appear in your inbox, you need to “follow” the wave.
When someone adds you directly to a wave, or if you contribute to a wave, you will automatically be following that wave. But when you see a public wave that you would like to get updates on and monitor the conversation, you can chose to follow it by hitting the follow button in the wave panel toolbar. You can also archive waves, which will removes waves from your inbox. When there is an update to an archived wave, it will appear in your inbox again. And you can switch between following and unfollowing a wave as much and as often as you like. → Read More
ThoughtWorks Studios, a software development startup, is launching a new version of its project management tool, Mingle, and is rolling out integration with Google Wave.
Mingle has been upgraded to feature a communications platform within the application, called “Murmurs.” A mix of an IM and Twitter-like microblogging format, Murmurs allows anyone involved in a software project to have online conversations that are associated with a specific Mingle project. → Read More
We already knew Waveboard was bringing Google Wave to both the desktop and the iPhone with two dedicated clients, but you’ll be interested to know the iPhone app is now live on the App Store and available for less than a buck (iTunes link).
As you can tell from the short demo video below, the app does exactly what you think it does: it displays ‘waves’ and lets you search historical ones, start new ones and manage your contacts. It also opens external links in a custom browser without the need to leave the app. Waveboard also supports push notifications through a workaround (you need both the Prowl iPhone app and the Mac version of Waveboard), although they did say the next iteration will have proper push notifications. → Read More
Everyone is still searching for what exactly Google Wave’s role will be in the web going forward. We think it’s still too early to tell, but one man, Joe Sabia, has put together maybe the most impressive Wave demonstration yet. Is he doing something extremely useful? No. He’s using it to reenact scenes from Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting. The result is brilliant. → Read More
Google Wave, the search giant’s latest experiment in post-email communications, is hardly out the gate, with some of the first 100,000 private beta testers still waiting for their invites. (I just finally got mine today, two weeks after launch). But Google Wave already has a few secrets. The one that surprised me is that even though not that many people can use it yet, Google Wave already works on the iPhone.
There are two ways to get Google Wave to work on your iPhone. The first way is to simply go to wave.google.com in mobile Safari on your iPhone. It warns you that you are not using a browser supported during the preview, but if you click through, it works pretty well. The site has obviously been optimized for Webkit-based browsers like the one on the iPhone and Google’s own Android phones (I tried it on Android, and it works there as well). You can select different conversation “waves” (or threads) and contacts, or dive into a specific wave.
But here is where it gets interesting. In addition to the Web app via the mobile Safari browser, you can get rid of the Safari wrapper altogether. → Read More
We’re now a little over a week into the extended roll-out of the preview build of Google Wave. This is an important time for the service because many people can now finally start using it as they eventually may — which is to say, with their friends and colleagues. Of course, the backlash is also already in full-swing, as expected. But I can’t help but wonder if this backlash and the hype that it is a byproduct of, is blinding some to the larger picture. Google Wave is not just a service, it is perhaps the most complete example yet of a desire to shift the way we communicate once again. → Read More
As we’ve noted several times, Google Wave is a service that is fairly hard to explain. And for many people, it’s also hard to understand. That seems somewhat reasonable given that it’s trying to be a new form of communication and that it is still very early in its life span. But just how hard is it to understand? A new website brilliantly takes a look.
Easiertounderstandthanwave.com pits Wave against the other hard-to-understand aspects of life. On the site, you are given a picture of Wave and a picture of something else and asked to click on which is easier to understand. Wave’s competition includes: Metaphysics, the end of Donnie Darko, Ozzy Osbourne, Death, osmotic pressure, cardiothoracic surgery, the health care-reform bill, Google Fast Flip, and even Sarah Palin. → Read More
So now that some of you have your Google Wave invites (I know not all of you, I don’t even have one for my personal account yet, if it’s any consolation), and we’ve gotten some of that inevitable backlash out of our system, it’s time to figure out just what Google Wave is. And more importantly, what it will be used for.
I tried to answer that on TV the other day, but the truth is that as a new communication medium, it’s hard to describe exactly what Wave is. It’s kind of like email meets instant messaging meets real-time sharing and collaboration, but even that description is lacking. Eventually, if Wave takes off, it’s probably one of those things that will just be understood for being what it is, even if no one can really describe it by relating it to something else. → Read More
Google Wave is roiling the collaboration space as it moves out of the sandbox and into a wider beta. The ripples are being felt by vendors ranging from IBM to Cisco and even Google itself. IBM is challenging Google Apps with an iNotes offering undercutting on price (as well as features, as Google quickly points out.) Cisco is buying small business videoconferencing assets to bolster its Telepresence technology at the high end, and jettisoning IBM Sametime in favor of its WebEx tools. While Google and many analysts see the iNotes move as a direct challenge to Gmail’s recent instability, the likelier motivation for IBM is Microsoft’s inroads with its Exchange Online product. Redmond may be months away from rolling out Azure, but the on-demand versions of Exchange, Shaepoint, and then Office Web Apps are going to hurt IBM where it counts. Why not attack the weaker target in Google’s consumer/corporate hybrid product to change the subject, Big Blue figures. Meanwhile Wave continues to make people nervous about where email is going anyway. Wave remains a relatively siloed project inside Google, with its realtime constructs more on the bleeding edge than practical solutions for the problem of managing the growing information stream. Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed signaled the power of the micromessaging trend, and attacks on Wave’s experimental UI and metaphor belie the extent to which email is threatened. Since Twitter went mainstream in the last year, micromessaging threads have become the main carrier of realtime news. Trending topics may seem the fundamental index, but information at the actionable level is carried in a smaller stream managed largely by retweets and overlapping follow clouds. A cascading series of Likes in the Friendfeed/Facebook nomenclature is far more efficient than other mechanisms, including email newsletters and RSS syndication. This new brand of news is more CNBC than MSNBC. It’s based on a “what’s in it for me” dynamic, which prioritizes the flow based on business implications first, followed by political and social impact. The Letterman story spread on Twitter and Friendfeed once the show aired on the East Coast, giving viewers the heads up to tune in to the show on the Pacific run. The morning shows ran with it as the lead. The underlying reason for the position at the top of the news cycle: the potential impact on Letterman’s contract at a time when Leno’s move to primetime has changed viewing → Read More
The much awaited release of Google Wave is now taking place; with 100,000 lucky users getting invites to use the ambitious online communication and collaboration platform. Wave was first unveiled at Google I/O back in May, with Google co-founder Sergey Brin telling us that the product “will set a new benchmark for interactivity.” Our very own MG Siegler appeared yesterday on G4′s Attack of the Show to explain what’s so special about Wave and how it could change the web.
MG says that Wave can best be characterized as email, plus instant messaging, plus real-time collaboration wrapped up in one package. One of the key components of Wave is its open-source platform, which encourages developers to build games, messaging, and other types of applications on top of Google Wave. But it’s still yet to be determined whether Wave will take off; it could face backlash. Watch the video above for more. → Read More
Have you gotten your Google Wave invite yet? Just kidding — they’re not out yet. The team (which is based in Australia) decided to push them out later today so they could be up to deal with issues surrounding the massive influx of new users. And judging from the response on the web, “massive” is also the perfect word to describe the anticipation for the service.
Ever since it was unveiled at Google I/O this past May, it seems that everyone wants to know everything about Wave. And yesterday, when it was revealed that a big roll-out to more than just developers was around the corner, interest spiked again. Since then, the term has not left Twitter’s Trending Topics area. But there is always a downside to so much hype, and I’m pretty certain we’re going to see it in the coming days and weeks with Google Wave too: Backlash. → Read More
When Google Wave was unveiled at Google I/O back in May, we noted that it was one of the most ambitious projects we’ve ever seen. Started as a side project in Google’s Sydney, Australia offices, it had the potential to significantly alter the way online communication was carried out. And Google was betting big on it. Google’s VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra devoted the entire keynote of day two of I/O to the project, and no less than Google co-founder Sergey Brin showed up to talk about it afterwards.
Ambitious as Wave was, there were still some rough edges. We were granted access to the developer’s preview shortly after Google I/O, and it was clear that while the basic frame of all this great promise was there, there were no shortage of bugs to be ironed out. And that’s exactly what the Wave team has been doing the past four months, developer Lars Rasmussen tells us. And now they feel the product is ready to be given to a much bigger audience, as they will open it up to over 100,000 new users starting tomorrow. → Read More
A lot of people use Twitter to have conversations with others, but that’s not really what it was built for. Initially, Twitter was just supposed to be a place to update what you are doing; the @reply only came around because people started using it to direct a conversation at another user. Now conversations are one of the most interesting things about Twitter, and a new startup launching in private beta today at TechCrunch50, Lissn, wants to build a new platform from the ground up with conversations in mind.
If you’ve seen the video demos or had a chance to use Google Wave at all, Lissn may seem familiar — it has the same type of real-time conversation aspect. The difference, of course, is that this is the main function of Lissn, while Wave is trying to be a lot of different things wrapped into one. Lissn is all about having conversations with people, and allows others to watch, and join in as they’d like. → Read More
Following on the heels of President Obama’s speech to school children across the United States (in which he mentioned Google), Google has made a “back-to-school” announcement of its own. This fall, over five million students at “thousands of schools” in more than 145 countries will be using Google Apps’ Education offering, which represents a user increase of 400 percent from this time last year.
Google is also launching a new centralized site targeted towards recruiting educational institutions. It includes tips on how to switch to Google Apps, the top ten reasons why to make the switch, discussion forums and more. And of course, the site is packed with testimonials from schools like Temple University, that attest to the popularity, cost-effectiveness and ease of use of Google Apps in the educational space. → Read More
Google Wave, the search giant’s incredibly ambitious new Email/IM hybrid that was announced in May, is quickly picking up steam. As of last week the service was open to around 6,000 developers (most of whom had attended conferences like I/O), and Google is planning to send out an additional 20,000 invites over the next month. It looks like a big batch of them just went out, as we’ve received a number of tips about new invitations, and Twitter is currently abuzz with excited developers thrilled to finally get in on the action.
One other piece of news that will be very interesting to non-developers eagerly waiting to try out the service: Google is planning to release Wave to 100,000 users beginning on September 30th, using the service’s main wave.google.com hub rather than the developer site (we can likely expect a Gmail-like limited invitation system). By this time we can likely expect there to be a rich variety of Wave widgets — the site already boasts plenty of them, including a RickRoll widget and more practical things like a weather forecast — but you can’t try them out without a Developer Sandbox account. → Read More
Google unveiled its new communication tool, Wave, this morning with a bang at Google I/O. The blogosphere is a buzz with talk of the new product, which blends email, instant messaging, collaboration and real time functionality into one platform. And Wave will open up its API soon to developers and will eventually be an open source product, letting the developer community take an active part in shaping the platform. We spoke to Wave’s creators yesterday, brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon. One question that’s is on everyone’s minds is whether Gmail and Google Apps become obsolete with the emergence of such powerful platform?
TechCrunch IT Editor Steve Gillmor caught up with Google co-founder Sergey Brin (who he also talked to about Chrome yesterday) after a Q&A session with Wave’s creators, and asked him about the future of Google Apps and more. → Read More
We’re here in the press room at Google I/O for the follow-up press event to the Google Wave unveiling today during the keynote. The initial audience response to Google Wave was huge; there was a standing ovation the likes of which I haven’t seen at a tech event, including the Apple events in recent years.
We spoke with the creators of the service, brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon yesterday, but it should be interesting to see and hear from them following the initial reception. Find our live notes below and the live Qik stream below that. The creators are here along with Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of Engineering. → Read More
Yesterday, during the Google I/O keynote, Google’s VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, laid out a grand vision for the direction Google sees the web heading towards with the move to the HTML 5 standard. While we’re not there yet, all the major browser players besides Microsoft are aligned and ready for the next phase, which will include such things as the ability to run 3D games and movies in the browser without additional plug-ins. But Google wants to take it one step further with a brand new method of communication for this new era. It’s called Google Wave.
Everyone uses email and instant messaging on the web now, but imagine if you could tie those two forms of communication together and add a load of functionality on top of it. At its most fundamental form, that’s essentially what Wave is. Developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon out of Google’s Sydney, Australia offices, Wave was born out of the idea that email and instant messaging, as successful as they still are, were both created a very long time ago. We now have a much more robust web full of content and brimming with a desire to share stuff. Or as Lars Rasumussen put it, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.” → Read More
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