Summary
Google Wave is a social network, and Google has the means to make it profitable quickly.
Analysis
Google has started sending invitations to developers and enthusiasts to join the Google Wave trial. In a typical Google fashion, to help the development, a relatively early version of the product is launched to gather as much feedback from users as possible and get marketing by word of mouth.
Google Wave still has some way to go, and even the trial launch can be improved. To be able to see the benefits of a communication tool, one needs to have a community to communicate with.
For many, their first experience of Wave is with strangers, and there are no pointers to get users going. Given this situation, while waiting for more people you know to join, as it is closed, there are no RSS, Tweet, email, etc to indicate that there is a new Wave while the user is not logged in.
No doubt this will be fed back and fixed by the time the second round of adopters give it a go.
And that is the main thing: even though Google Wave is positioned as an email replacement, it is first and foreall a social network.
While Facebook has 300 million regular users, it is only now, 5 years after launch, that it is becoming cash flow positive. Still a long way to being profit making, which is the issue for all the other social networking sites, such as MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn and Twitter.
While the problems mentioned above and in the article are fixable and will be fixed, Google can learn from these other social networking sites to up the ante in terms of viral marketing, but it had got an idea or two in terms of monetising its future success.
- Unique positioning: organisation and collaboration. Google Wave, contrary to competing products, thanks to Google search engine, will help us find what we need.
- Application store: hundreds of applications have already been developed, for consumer and business users. Google plans to open an application store and take a share of the revenue
- Multiple devices: applications available for Wave will be relevant to a wide range of devices, unlike itunes apps which are solely for the iPod and the iPhone.
- Interoperability: while Microsoft and Yahoo! may introduce Wave-like products, Google plans to make Wave work with multiple platform from different vendors.
- Marketing channel: Wave has the potential to become an important marketing tool for companies to reach their customers with rich, targeted communication. "Wave is something everyone's got on their radar", said Dan Shurst, Director of emerging Media at agency Resource Interactive, which counts Victoria's Secret, HP and Procter & Gamble as customers to develop their social-media campaigns.
