Since Google Wave is expected to have a limited release on September 30th, it is time to get an understanding of what this tool is, how it works, why it is revolutionary and how we might use it.

What it is?

Announced by Google on May 27th, 2009 as a “personal communication and collaboration tool”, Google Wave is the next big “death of email” hype storm.  As an open source application, it is available for others to develop it out via it’s API – much like Twitter with it’s endless supply of third party apps or add-ons for your Firefox browser.  File sharing is native to it so you can drag photos and docs right into conversations – no more email attachments.  Everything is real time with threaded conversations, wiki-style editing and the ability to embed a Wave into your own website or blog.  While definitely a tool that can define the future of online communication, it also could be another layer to the social media onion.

If you want to make waves, you need to get in the pool!

How does it work?

Users create “waves” and add other users to it – much like starting an email to a friend or group of people.  But instead of a back and forth volley or text with attachments to upload and download, everyone shares a common pool of media – text, photos, videos, documents, RSS feeds, gadgets, etc.  New users can be added to the pool and continue to contribute in real-time.  And if you’re added to the pool late and don’t have the foggiest idea what everyone is currently talking about, you can replay the wave from the beginning to watch the timeline of events unfold before you.

Why is it revolutionary?

Currently, our online communications are very fragmented – Email, Instant Messaging, Twitter, Facebook, forums, file sharing websites, social networking sites and more.  Some of these technologies, like email and instant messaging are pretty ancient in their technology.  Newer communications, such as Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites provide a richer experience, but are still spread over a diverse landscape.  You can use third party tools to aggregate some of these web 2.0 tools together (Ping.fm, Seesmic Desktop and FriendFeed to name a few), but none of these wrap the whole enchilada within their tortilla.  Google Wave is the whole enchilada served straight from their coding kitchen.

How will we use it?

The primary use for it of course, is for online communications and file sharing.  Whether you are creating a wave to discuss the football season with friends, share photos with family members or collaborate on a project with a client, it could be the go-to tool that truly does spell the end of email.  However, since it is open sourced for the developer community at large, new uses not yet imagined are sure to be developed – think iPhone apps.

The Google Wave web app

The key is adaption.

The biggest hurdle with any new technology is that it has to be adapted by the general public to succeed.  Just being better doesn’t guarantee the public will embrace it.  Google Wave has it’s own lengthy list of jargon terms and from-scratch approach to the user interface.  While Twitter has gained a huge following with it’s unique approach to communication, it only requires a small learning curve and a few silly-sounding jargon terms to learn such as “tweet” and “retweet”.  Google Wave is a bit more complex and abstract.  There are still lots of people who haven’t figured out Twitter (or email, for that matter), so I see a high rate of avoidance being inevitable.  And if someone isn’t using Google Wave, then you obviously can’t communicate with them via the tool.

So what about this new jargon?

Wave: Since this term mirrors the name of the product offering, it makes sense that it is the primary element of the new technology.  A wave is the full history of a conversation thread or project collaboration.

Wavelet: A subset of a wave – basically consisting of related elements of the full wave.

Blip: Single elements of a wavelet, such as individual messages.  Blips can be private or publically shared.

Children: Blips that are attached to other blips.

Document: A blip’s content.

Extension: Applications that extend the functionality of Google Wave.  There are 2 extension types that can be used: gadgets and robots.

Gadgets: This would be like add-ons that you can install into your Firefox browser to increase it’s functionality and to customize it’s usability.

Robots: Yeah, really – robots!  Basically extensions that provided automated processes.

Google Wave: a stand alone tool or embed it elsewhere.

One of the things that increased the popularity of YouTube is it’s ability to provide embed code that you can use to post YouTube videos on other websites and blogs.  This dramatically helped to spread the brand awareness and site content to thousands, if not millions, of URL’s throughout the internet.  Similarly, waves can be embedded elsewhere on the net.

In conclusion:

Google Wave has the clout and resources of Google, the anxious anticipation of millions and a fresh (if somewhat different) approach to online communication going for it.  It may not be adopted by all – or in my opinion end fragmentation of online communication totally – but it does give us a chance to explore the next evolution of the web.  Even in the unlikely event that it fails miserably, it is already setting a new course that other online applications will follow.

Additional Resources:

Here is a highly abridged version of the video presented by Google on the waves.google.com website.  The original is long – very long.  This 10 minute abridged version sums it up:

Here is the link to sign up with Google for an invite to use Google Wave: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/

Now that the hype has settled and the new website smell has faded, let’s take a look at Twitter and how to maximize it’s effectiveness via third party Twitter tools.  These tools come in various forms; from websites, desktop apps to mobile phone applications, there are many ways to get your tweets in order.

Seesmic Desktop, along with Tweetdeck, is one of the exciting Adobe Air desktop apps to try for Twitter.

Multi-Account Management

Twitter is a great tool, but their website is pretty simple – and that has it’s pros and cons.  The pros being the ease of using it.  For casual Twittering, it handles most of what you need.  But what if you have a personal Twitter account and a work Twitter account – or even more Twitter accounts to promote various aspects of your business.  Now having various browsers open to manage all those accounts at once is not efficient – time for a tool that allows you to manage multiple accounts at once in one user interface.  Their are numerous choices out there, but the ones I recommend looking into the most are HootSuite.com, TweetLater.com, TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop and Twhirl.  All these tools are fantastic to easily post a tweet from different accounts without switching browsers or logging in and out of the Twitter website.

Beautiful interface, great features, lots of fun to use - HootSuite is a hoot!

Following more than a few hundred people on Twitter but have only a handful whose tweets you really want to read?  TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop let you group those you follow into smaller more manageable lists.  You could create a list just of family members and friends, just of business contacts or whatever other criteria you wish.  Then you can just view one of these lists so it is easily to see these posts without them getting lost in the Twitter stream.

One of the biggest problems I have with Twitter is having the time to Tweet.  My day is busy and I can’t spend my time at work managing my Tweets.  This is where TweetLater.com and HootSuite.com shine.  You can load up a number of interesting tweets when you have 15 minutes available and schedule these tweets to get spread out throughout the day.  Now you can look like you’re busy tweeting throughout the day!  Busy Twitterers are more likely to gain more followers and get more visibility within their current Twitter network.  HootSuite.com even allows you to track stats of your post’s links so you can find out how many people are clicking on the links you are sharing.

Manage Followers/Unfollows

When you get to hundreds of followers, at some point you’ll realize you are following a lot of people you don’t really need to be following.  Maybe you followed them simply because they followed you.  But their posts have nothing to offer you or are so infrequent you never see them.  You try and track them down in your followers list, but all that scrolling through pages is not an effective use of your time.  With a tool like Twitter Karma, you can easily see all your followers and those you are following on one page.  And unlike the Twitter website, you can see at a glance if the following is mutual.  What’s that, that person you were thinking of unfollowing is not following you anymore anyway – Twitter Karma is a good way to find those tricky individuals that follow you first to get you to follow you back only to then unfollow you afterwards to make their numbers look better.

Twitter Karma is an easy way to manage your friends and followers on Twitter.

Grade Your Performance

What is your influence on Twitter?  How do you rank overall?  Hubspot has a clever little tool to help you get an idea of your level of influence on Twitter.  Go to http://twitter.grader.com to see how you stack up.  This is mostly for fun, but you can pick up some tips on increasing your Twitter influence and find other Twitter users of interest in your area.  Best of all, it gives you a goal to try and beat which encourages more Twitter activity.

Secure Your Tweets

You have to have a backup plan for when things go bad.  That Twitter Fail Whale could surface at any moment and eat your tweets and followers.  Stories have been told of users accounts getting wiped out, either in full or partially, for no other reason than a Twitter technical issue.  So, if you are investing valuable time in your Twitter account, then it makes sense to get it backed it just like any other valuable data you have.  A tool to do this easily is TweetBackup.com.

Share Media

Yep, you can do more than just share 140 characters on Twitter.  The most well know media sharing tool for Twitter is TwitPic which lets you share photos.  TwitVid.io is a newer one that lets you share video.  The video you share can be an uploaded video or one you take on the spot from your computer’s webcam.  You login to TwitVid.io using your Twitter login and post you video to Twitter directly from the TwitVid.io website.  Another cool service is TwitDoc.com which allows you to share files on Twitter.  It works in the same manner as TwitVid.io, but it also has a Desktop Application available.  Say you want to post a PDF document of a business flyer up for your followers to see, TwitDoc.com allows this – just make sure if you’re on the receiving end of a TwitDoc that it’s from a trusted source.

TwitVid.io - a good site to share video on Twitter.

Take Your Tweets With You

On the go a lot?  Have a smart phone?  Then get a Twitter application for your phone so you can Twitter from anywhere.  I can only speak for iPhone apps as that’s the phone I use, but I’m sure if your phone is smart, it has a Twitter app available.  The iPhone Twitter app I like best is TwitterFon.  It is easy to use and even ties into TwitPic if I want to tweet a photo from my phone.  Many of these apps are free, so try a few and decide for yourself.

Promote via Twitter

Got a great blog post or webpage?  Use TweetMeme.com to make it easier for your viewers to retweet the content by placing a TweetMeme “retweet” button on your blog or webpage.  If a viewer likes your info, they just need to click the “retweet” button to broadcast the content to their followers on Twitter.  In addition, your TweetMeme retweets get tracked and if you get enough viewers clicking on your TweetMeme retweet button you will get extra publicity on the TweetMeme website (can you say “Digg.com”).

Build Community

If you really want to connect with your Twitter community, try Mr. Tweet.  This is a great tool for two reasons; 1) you can recommend other Twitterers (people love getting recommendations) and 2) you can get recommendations of other Twitterers that you may wish to follow but aren’t yet.  When you recommend someone on Mr. Tweet, it is recorded on the site and you can also have your recommendation tweeted on Twitter.  Also, Mr. Tweet only looks to recommend people you should follow that have recommendations from others you already follow – in other words, recommendations from Mr. Tweet are really recommendations from those you already know on Twitter.  This leads to having a higher quality of overall friends in your Twitter stream.

I pity the fool who don't use Mr. Tweet.

Got More?

This is a very short list of all the Twitter-related tools that exist.  You may find some that work best for you differ from this list – if you do, tell me what it is and how you’re using it?