Story by
Alex Wilhelm
Alex Wilhelm is a San Francisco-based writer. You can find Alex on Twitter, and on Facebook. You can reach Alex via email at [email protected] Alex Wilhelm is a San Francisco-based writer. You can find Alex on Twitter, and on Facebook. You can reach Alex via email at [email protected]
Wave is not doing anything for me, and I wonder if it does much for anyone.
I logged into Wave today, for the first time in a week, to head to a wave that actually mattered. A friend is working on a secret project, and wanted to get my input. He dropped everything into a wave, and told me to take a look.
I still have yet to find that wave, but I did waste a lot of time looking.
Wave has a single innovation, that I can use, that I love: instant team typing. That alone is amazing. But, I came to the realization that if Google would take that and drop it into Google Docs, I would never open Wave again.
That said, who the hell is still using Wave? Looking at my “inbox” (or Tide, as a I call it, if you get it: incoming waves. Anyway.), let’s see.
Here are a few select sample waves that I am supposed to check out.
Eliminate Tournament – I have no idea what this is, who anyone in the Wave is, or what to do with this. I did read the whole wave. Didn’t help much.
hey everyone, this is just a wave to chat -What the hell? If you want to “chat” with me, either text, email, GChat, or Twitter me. God knows that the last thing that I need is to have another place to have to go to check. Just to chat.
Hmm wave – This explains itself.
I do have some useful Waves. Maybe three or so. They are of course buried under around 50 other waves that I did not create, ask to be invited to, or want to have a part in. But it gets even better: my friends, that I actually want to hear from, wave me as well. From what I can tell, they have nothing to do but say this:
“So this is Wave. Hey man, what are you using this for?”
You know it, and have 17 waves that just say that. Horrible and content-free as that is, it’s about as far as people seem to get with Wave. So much the revolution. Wasn’t this supposed to be a game changer? What happened to that?
If I recall correctly, people claimed that Wave was sub-useful at launch, but that developers were going to be building on top of Wave to make it “killer useful.” When will that be happening? I would love to know.
Until then, I will use Wave when someone else insists on it, but I refuse to check my Wave inbox. Doing so is an excercise in futility.
It’s Saturday, tell me why I’m wrong.