Back in May, Google unveiled an early preview of its new connected and collaborative communications experience, Wave. Today, Google Wave is emerging from closed beta as more than 100,000 invitations are sent out to testers.
What is Wave? It is a new browser experience says Google, and one that will change the way we talk and share information.
While email has remained virtually inchanged since its inception in the eighties, blogging, IM and microblogging have rapidly been redefining how we use the web in communities and groups.
“Google Wave has the potential for making you more productive when communicating and collaborating. Even when you’re just having fun,” said Lars Rasmussen, engineering manager and Stephanie Hannon, group product manager. (The official Google blog post was in fact written by the two Googlers using Wave).
“We use it ourselves every day for everything, from planning pub crawls to sharing photos, managing release processes and debating features, to writing design documents,” they explained.
The name Wave comes from Google’s concept of waves of connected, threaded messages, with wavelets being defined as subthreads and blips as the individual messages or emails.
Google Wave is essentially a collaborative web tool where messages and content can be shared, co-edited and collaborated on but mixed with Google Mail in that all contacts can be “blipped” or messaged, and all related images, folders and tags associated with them are gathered in one place.
By Marie Boran, via Gadgetrepublic.com
Photo: Google Wave redefines the inbox.
