I am not sure if you would have seen the press releases on a new service Google is going to offer later this year, so I though it might be helpful to at least mention it. Google Wave is a new platform that Google will provide as an open source piece of code that will not only be used by Google to collapse a number of their products into one screen, but also allow developers to provide add-ons, or develop their own uses for this collaboration engine. You can go to wave.google.com and see the video that explains the features that will be provided.

As always, let’s take a high level view of what they are doing… Over the last 15 years, we have developed a number of tools that have caught on as mainstream capabilities. Email, text messaging, ranking, Twitter (microblogging) and discussion groups are just a few examples. As stand alone capabilities, these are all providing value to a large audience. The next step in the evolution is to combine all of these capabilities with applications like spreadsheets, word processors, and presentation tools. Think Microsoft Office with lots of social media built in. This appears to be what Google Wave is all about. They want to provide the application platform that truly enables collaboration between anyone on the internet – at the next level. Someone will get this accomplished so we might as well keep an eye on Google because they certainly sell their products at the right price – often free. I even saw one writer today that asked the question, “is Google Wave a Twitter Killer?)

Which brings me to Twitter… One has to ask why Twitter tool off when it is in some ways, just glorified instant messaging. Be that as it may, Twitter has grabbed the worlds fancy and is now in the dramatic climb that Facebook has been in for a couple of years. So I ask myself, is what Twitter is providing anything that will not just be mimicked by many others? Certainly Google will buy, or seek to mitigate Twitter. So will Microsoft, Yahoo, and a host of others. After all, the technology behind the concept is simple. I suppose that Twitter is at a crossroads where people will either just adopt their engine as a standard, or seek to build their own and improve on it. One thing is for sure, the growth rates on Twitter are amazing. The fact that they are talking about doing a TV show is wild, and USA Today have a front page spread showing how they used Twitter to ask questions of business leaders.

Predictions can be fun in that you eventually learn if you are right or wrong. So here is my prediction… Twitter will get acquired one day soon, and regardless who buys them, at least 3 other competitors will come out with technology that does the same thing. The only advantage Twitter will have is an ecosystem of applications that have been developed around it, and a few thousand people that have lots of followers they do not want to lose. In other words, Twitter will follow the path of Netscape as a browser…

I came across this article on TechCrunch and wanted to share it. They did a great job with the explanation of Google Wave Trackers, robots that hunt the Internet for information and offer you views as it happens. Below is the first paragraph and a link to the whole article.

Google Wave may be a big deal for Google, but it’s an even bigger deal for Microsoft. It forces Redmond to step up at the very time it would rather run silent and deep. Correct that: those owners of the crown jewels who’ve guided the aircraft carrier for decades would rather ignore the impact of these two brothers and a product manager who moved Down Under to build what may well be Google’s realtime core.

The Manhattan Project at TechCrunch
by Steve Gillmor on June 1, 2009

Scott Klososky
scott@klososky.com