Three weeks ago I received an invite to Google Wave. So, I’ve been using Google Wave for a few weeks now.

This is an overview of my waves of the first week:

meta-discussions on wave

At this time, it just doesn’t have the critical mass to be useful (to me). A few weeks ago someone gave a presentation on J-Fall and had it’s Google Wave address next to his email address and twitter username, and started the presentation with: I hope that someone adds me to Wave, so I have people I can wave with (is that a verb? Now, it is :)).

Technically, it is really neat (although, somewhat not-performing (at least not Google-like-performing, it’s still faster than your-average-website…)), but that doesn’t cut it. Email is obsolete, but email has the advantage that is ubiquitous. Everyone has an email address, and there are a zillion email servers/clients you could use (or, you could write your own, if you really like :)). Wave, on the other hand isn’t widespread (yet?), and there is only one (real) implementation. I think that that last one is essential: for acceptance within organizations it is essential to be able to host your own server without a hassle, and with choice. Until then, I don’t really see a market for Wave.