The absurd life of tech fads
It is hard to measure the actual impact of any given tech fad when it launches. The craze that accompanies a device like the Iphone is roughly the same as the craze that accompanies a software launch like Hulu plus, the Palm Pre, OnLive, and more significant because it’s what I’m writing about today, GoogleWave.
A little over a year ago, Google Wave was this mysterious new service from Google that was going to combine the best features of email, facebook, and instant messaging to change the way we collaborate. As with many new Google services, you had to have an invitation to participate. It created all kinds of hype. People who had invitations to give out could create huge waves of “tweets” on twitter, all from people in search of an opportunity to experience this brand new collaborative communication experience. If we could all just use it, the world would work more efficiently.
Then, Google started to ease up… there were lots of invitations available. As we all signed up, we excitedly anticipated how our world would be changed.
Then we logged in. I’m not going to lie, I got in there and tried to use it. And the general impression I was left with was… “What the heck was that?”
Not exactly world shattering stuff.
Fast forward to just a couple of days ago, and Google has announced that they’ll no longer be developing Wave as a stand alone product.
So, what went wrong? Why didn’t we all get it? Why aren’t we all collaborating in new, innovative ways? Is the world worse-off for not adopting Wave as a communication form?
The thing to remember is that this sort of thing has been happening for years. The Ford Edsel. New Coke. Clear Pepsi. The Blackberry Torch. Wait, I’m early on the last one. Sorry. I digress. The fact is that when engineers and marketers work together to make radical changes to the way a commonly used device or service works, sometimes they will get it right. Sometimes they will fail spectacularly. The latter will be much more fun to watch than the former.
Wave over-promised and under-delivered. It wasn’t that impressive. It didn’t make collaboration easier, at least not the way we collaborate at my company. It was easy to evaluate it and think, “eh… meh.” Then we went back to our email. It just didn’t deliver a revolution.
Maybe if it hadn’t been so over-sold, we would’ve been kinder in our evaluation. Tech fads are kind of like this, though. We never know when the next “game changer” will actually deliver. It’s very possible to invest time/money/brainpower into figuring out how something works only to find it deemed useless by the crowd.
Googlewave, I still don’t really think I got it. But, you’ll be missed. Or not.
