A new and strikingly different idea has once again been proposed by the most innovative company in the web. Google wave is not just some new E - Mail service, it is much more than that. It essentially represents a new way to share content within the internet. It is collaborative and live, and as Jeff Jarvis argues " it is a new way to make news".
Some quick background information before I elaborate on my thesis presented above. Wave is still in development, but Google is said to launch what they call their new "E-Mail service" fairly soon. Wave esentially represents some combination of E-Mail, chat, wikipedia and a blog. It allows you to invite others to a conversation by simply clicking on them in your contact list, reference to different sources on the web (blogging and addimg mini feeds), upload photos, videos or office documents and even to play a chess game with your friends that you are interacting with. If you invite someone over for dinner, you can easily attach Google Maps and a road description to your E-Mail, which makes it much more convenient for your guest.
Contrary to previous Google products, Wave seems to be fairly open for other developers, enabling Google to become even more intertwined in the web.
As mentioned above, I see much more in this revolutionary concept than just an E-Mail service. Imagine a team of reporters - together with witnesses on the scene - able to contribute photos and news to the same Wave (formerly known as a story or a page). One can write up what is known; a witness can add facts from the scene and photos; an editor or reader can ask questions. And it is all contained under a single address - a permalink for the story - that is constantly updated from a collaborative team. In the case for Focus online example, the final decision as to what eventually appears on the site could still be with the journalist in charge of the article. Yet, inlcuding others in the story could make the news so much more interesting and worthwile, with absolutely no increase in costs.
At this part I'd like to quote Jarvis again, as he very aptly describes the whole process:
"Wave takes this to the next level. It combines the notions of a process as people add and subtract and update; it has the benefit of a wiki - a snapshot of current knowledge; it can be live; it can feed a blog page with the latest; it can feed Twitter with updates; it is itself the collaborative tool that lets participants question each other.
Wave isn’t just the email we’d invent if email were invented today, as was Google’s goal. Wave is what news can be if we invent it today, as we must.
Wave is the new news."
As convincing as this new approach may be, two immediate problems are occuring to me instantly. Are we to implement such a new approach within a news portal such as Focus Online, you do need an incredibly skilful and advanced set of programmers to perform such a task. Google's chief developer himself, Lars Rasmussen (developer of Google Maps and Google Earth), has been put in charge for this project. It is evident that Burda does not have the adequate staff to design such a new technology.
Secondly it has been obvious numerous times that the traditional German customer is much slower to adapt to new formats and models. Thus, even if the technology would be integrated successfully within the website, it is questionable whether it would appeal to people.
Yet I do believe that this particular new way to make news has the potential to reform and reshape the way that news websites are being displayed on the internet, and it would be amazing to see Focus Online at the forefront of this development.
Will get back soon,
J
sounds very digital and adventureous Jaki, fascinating not only the browser war between microsoft and google, now the email battlefield between these two big warriors has come to the game.
ReplyDeleteSure, we will see, wether we consumers will be at the end the winner.
Bthwy just read an interesting survey,(www.psbresearch.com/allthingsd)
"word of mouth" is key to consumers to try a new search engines ,"word of mouth is the most effectice way to drive trial of new searchengines -it's influential among 33 percent of the US population".
News and product reviews rank only on place 4 and 5.
This is interesting to us media people; probably it will be the same viral thing with new email apps like wave. It means that media doesn't play such a big role in spreading and adapting these new culture techniques as we all thought (rightly so, I still remember very well, 10 years ago it was Jean Schmetz, who introduced me to a new new search engine with a funny culty name, google -to me it was cool from the very moment on....and too bad, "wave" sounds yet a bit boring to me, not a very edgy brandname (- what do you think?) but reading your review the product is clearly reinventing email - therefore I am looking forward to its implementations not only on our new cool hp- netbooks, also in our still very googleminded minds...
kreuther bussl
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Indeed Wave seems to be next level internet. FAZ wrote today, Google is "in the internet" and innovates where others just copy. Maps was a major breakthrough and now Wave as a collaborative environment. Interesting, what you write on news journalism using such technology and the limits in adaption. On the other hand, to my knowledge Chrome has not been a game changer so far. But Google takes an open approach also by letting the developper community participate early. I am looking forward to read more of you digital adventures in the valley and like your quoting others like Jeff who know a lot.
ReplyDelete