have you any wool?

Google Wave. The Internet is abuzz, talking about this new product offering from the team that brought you Google Maps in 2005. Just do a search on Twitter and watch as real time updates come in just as fast as you can read them. Tweetdeck has not spoon fed me, but rather jammed down my throat, some 500 Tweets in the past hour or less since I did a search on the term “Google Wave“. Aside from the typical phrases such as “Amazing”, “Innovating”, “Game Changer” and “Revolutionary”, which all I happen to agree with, another trend seems to be emerging around the anticipation of this new communications and collaborations tool; people are all calling it a Twitter/Facebook killer.

So is it? Simply put – no.

What It Is
To be honest, it would be hard to describe Google Wave in it’s entirety because it is going to be so many things to so many people. At it’s core, it is a web communication and collaboration tool. However, as you dig deeper and learn more about what Google Wave has to offer, you’ll see it’s so much more than that. It allows the same functionality as email currently does, but with true threaded messages and conversations like a bulletin board or forum. It allows real time instant message conversations where instead of seeing “Jane is typing a message….”, you see Jane’s message as she’s typing it – character by character. It opens up the possibility of real time creation of documents, and eventually spreadsheets and powerpoints according to the Google Wave team, with multiple participants and including revision history. It’s a photo sharing tool, a comment tool for bloggers, a survey tool and even a wiki.

There are really too many benefits, features and possibilities surrounding Google Wave for me to list here, so I highly recommend you head over to wave.google.com and check out the keynote video if you haven’t already. It really is amazing stuff.

What It Is Not
Yes, Google Wave is game-changing. It is not, however, a Twitter and Facebook killer. This is my opinion of course, but bare with me. Twitter works on the premise of people wanting to communicate quickly with a huge audience and to participate in ongoing conversations with thousands of people – in 140 characters or less. The concept works, because you do not choose who you want to talk to, in most cases. You simply shout out what you want to say, via one of the many desktop clients, smart phone clients or ever twitter.com and your inner most thoughts are now out there for the world to see. The short nature of the tweets promotes quick and to the point messages which assists in near real time conversations, much like IM.

In it’s current incarnation, and from what I gather where Google Wave is heading – it will not replace this functionality. Why? Because the foundation of a Wave itself is that it’s designed to be a dialog between you and individuals you select. Do you see yourself adding 500 people to a single Wave so you can communicate with them all at the same time? Doubtful. Not to mention, you’d have to know who all those people are and that’s the beauty of Twitter; you’re shouting out into the vast unknown and people can choose to read or not and many continue to read without you ever knowing because they’ve yet to “follow” you.

This same concept is why Google Wave will not replace Facebook. Granted, Facebook is a little more targeted as you’re typically only sending status updates, links, notes, photos and survey requests to people you know and have chosen to interact with, but it still works on the same principal; most of the interaction on Facebook comes from the user “talking” to their entire entourage as a whole and then receiving feedback from selective users and continuing the conversation from there. You post a status update for your 5,000 friends to see and 2 of them choose to comment. You post pictures and share with your 500 classmates and 50 of them tag themselves at the crazy graduation party. You change your relationship status to single and you receive 70 messages in your inbox from guys who came dangerously close to committing sexual harassment at your last job, etc, etc.

In Summary
Twitter and Facebook operate under the premise that one person is communicating or sharing with many, sometimes without even knowing who they’re communicating with. Google Wave, while indeed a killer innovation in communications and something I am giddily anticipating, operates under the premise that you’re selecting those who you’re communicating/collaborating with and likely with a definitive discussion topic in mind. I suspect Google Wave will surely compliment Twitter and Facebook with embedding, client-side and server-side extensions – but a replacement, it will not be.