Google Wave seeks well-connected people —
I have read quite a few forum posts about people, mainly corporate or government officials, who are miserable about not receiving their Google Wave invitation.
You can't compare Wave to most other products that can be fully examined in stand-alone mode. The whole point of Wave is to get communities using it together. It makes no sense for individuals to get accounts, who are not connected to others with Wave accounts. So the viral roll-out scheme works because it privileges groups (formal or informal) who already engage in intensive communication together. These are the test environments that Google wants to find.
It also privileges communities who are not siloed, like disconnected corporate nodes in the network of online professional life. Communities are clusters, and one would hope that at least some of those members are well-connected to other communities. Somebody who is using Wave in one community then becomes the champion in bringing it in to the next community. Google would prefer to attract people at this stage who are well connected, as use case stories need to be propagated across the network.
I support Google's viral roll-out mechanism. Unfortunately, not all of us fit the ideal profile of being well net-connected.
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It doesn't work because only the 1st generation got invites. Those 2nd generation people cannot invite their contacts and end up with only 3 or 4 people to talk to. And they are probably already communicating with these people via established channels.
Posted by Rich Chestmat 26 October 2009 12:32 pm | link
At my college we use a different tool for working on our projects online.
Its free and needs no installation since its online, go to http://www.showdocument.com
pretty useful for me since i usually do my projects on the laptop. -chrisman
Posted by chris bailey 26 October 2009 10:54 pm | link
Any idea when 2nd generation users will get invites? I've given mine out & as you say, some people haven't got too many contacts.
Posted by Emma 27 October 2009 05:35 am | link
The question then is how did Google measure the 1st generation's connectedness factor? Was it by the number of Gmail contacts? For example, I have oodles of Twitter followers and I follow just as many. I have blog contacts and a respectable network in delicious, diigo, Nings, etc. I consider myself hyper-connected and active. I have even presented on the topic of Connectivity and professional development.
But, even though I requested an invite the very 1st day that Google allowed the public to do so, I still did not receive and invite until a kind soul passed one along to me after a request on my part.
Now that I am a 2nd-invitee tier, I have no availability to send invites to my personal learning network contacts .....
I use Gmail as my primary email, but I don't use it as a PLN-driver. Now that I am in the Wave ... I guess my Gmail connectivity will become stronger.
Posted by Frank 27 October 2009 06:41 am | link
I have only one contact -- the guy who got me the invite. We know each other but we no longer work together, so there's not really that much to use it for besides occasional chatter.
I have no invites to give to the people that would make it a very useful tool for me -- my assistant, other co-workers, etc. By not allowing people to invite others, Google is creating a bunch of isolated users with little to no ability to try out the product. What's the point of inviting anybody, then?
Posted by KP 27 October 2009 08:34 am | link
Thanks for the clarification, everyone. I didn't understand how the virus was contained. Ultimately, I wrote what should have occurred.
Posted by rlubensky 27 October 2009 11:31 am | link