What Works: The Web Way vs. The Wave Way

Thanks for this realistic perspective and analysis of Google Wave.

I don't have a lot of XMPP experience, is it really that daunting to implement?

Seems like there is a huge opportunity for someone to create an enterprise class Google Wave Server implementation that enterprise IT can adopt?

I strongly feel the success of Wave will be completely on the backs of the development community to explore, understand, innovate, and ultimately create solutions / tools that specific industries and audiences can understand and embrace.

We have to find specific ways to deploy and keep very simple for the masses.

Are you seriously saying that Google Wave is going to fail because it is going to be too hard to re-implement?

They have already released their protocol implementation as open source. So, the open source community should be able to modify it, clone it, and fork it however they want. They also have a free open source implementation that Google uses as a way to test for interoperability.

Google Wave's protocols aren't that terribly difficult. xmpp.org, for instance, lists 24 different server implementations (http://xmpp.org/software/servers.shtml), and there are *hundreds* of clients. In comparison to protocols like LDAP, Kerberos, TLS, etc. the protocols Google is using for this aren't even close to difficult.

Furthermore, I find it funny that you chose to compare this to something like RSS. RSS uptake is fairly low. Most normal people just don't "get it".

I'm not trying to say that Google Wave is going to replace email, or that it is the next killer thing in communication; however, I think it is going to have a *much* larger uptake than you are predicting.

You might have to implement all that stuff to run your own wave server, but not to add it to your blog.

Think about YouTube, you don't have to build a streaming video server in order to post a video on your blog, you just embed theirs. It's pretty much the same thing.

Even writing a wave "plugin" to support a new type of content is done with web-style api's, again, you don't need to reimplement (or even understand) the whole wave server infrastructure. You just need to write an ajax-style script that turns a chunk of xml data into another chunk of presentable html. The wave server (running at Google or wherever your wave host is) will handle all the heavy lifting of editing.

At least that's the promise. If all this works smoothly in the real world, I think it could be huge.

I think that what it is most important from google wave it is not the technology behind it, or how easy others would be able to replicate it. Neither its realtimeness. But rather the new way it will force us to think how we communicate on internet.

It is that concept of media integration between IM, mails, wiki, VoIP calls, and everything that we currently use to share or communicate, into just one consistent cohesive "wave" abstraction.

Think of that. Just being able to have this article, and this comment, and the other comments, and links to the article that I could send to friends, and IM chats about it, to have all that tied together, with context, stored for later reads or new chats/talks/edits or whatever. That is mindblowing

Thanks

The web is too big and what we do everyday on the web - not sure how wave would be able to support all those things easily.

Guess it might immediately support e-mail, IM, Orkut etc... but until developers develop super cool and simple to use applications on it, people won't be able to embrace it very effectively.

It would be interesting to see how google can implement it's search engine and advertising platforms based on wave concept.

I think that what it is most important from google wave it is not the technology behind it, or how easy others would be able to replicate it. Neither its realtimeness. But rather the new way it will force us to think how we communicate on internet.

It is that concept of media integration between IM, mails, wiki, VoIP calls, and everything that we currently use to share or communicate, into just one consistent cohesive "wave" abstraction.

Think of that. Just being able to have this article, and this comment, and the other comments, and links to the article that I could send to friends, and IM chats about it, to have all that tied together, with context, stored for later reads or new chats/talks/edits or whatever. That is mindblowing

Thanks

I see what you're saying, and to some extent, I agree. But overall, I think you're just underestimating the reality of how technology builds over time.

Look at the car for parallels.

The earliest cars were funky, strange designs, that hacking around on could really screw things up. Only the nerdiest of nerds would venture to mess around.

As the technology solidified around cars like the Model A, it was stable and easy for people to take things apart, learn, then put them back together.

For what? 40 years? car tech improved and increased in complexity, but generally was still able to be Shade Tree Mechaniced.

But today's cars are nearly impossible for mere mortals to do anything more than gas up and top off the windshield washer fluid.

As Web tech gets more complicated and as society relies more and more on this tech there WILL be a tipping point where mere mortals aren't able to hack around for a weekend. To deny this feels like yelling at the whippersnappers to get off their lawn.

Funny, I have a hard time believing Google Wave *won't* replace email.

The amusing thing is that reading this reminded me of my experience with Motion and Action Streams in Movable Type 4. I am not a programmer or a web guy, but I happily blogged for years with MT 3. MT4 seemed much more complicated/black boxy and much harder to theme/tweak using the default templates... and then Motion and Action Streams looked really cool, but the documentation sucked and they didn't fit into that weekend rule... I couldn't figure them out and even some of my geekier friends were stumped. My guess is Google Wave is an order of magnitude more complex than something like Motion and useful application of the technology for most of us mid-level bloggers will be years away.

And people aren't looking for a replacement for email, or instant messaging, or blogs, or wikis. Those tools all work great for their intended purposes...

Speaking for myself, I find email really frustrating for a lot of purposes.

And the question is not whether people are looking for a replacement for their existing technologies, but how they will respond to the new alternative that arrives.

@jake.communityguy.com pretty echoed my own thoughts. The complexity of Wave may cause a slow initial uptake, and will be limited to hugely intelligent nerds with way too much time on their hands. They will then build tools, frameworks, and interfaces for mere mortals like myself to more easily implement Wave technologies.

After all, isn't that what happened with PHP? It started as a toolkit to ease use of a much more sophisticated technology, and it significantly lowered the bar for entry for building dynamic websites.

Same goes for jQuery (and all the other javascript frameworks). I spent about a month in 2005 writing a browser-based image-cropping app with a draggable, re-sizable crop box. I wrote it in pure javascript, and spent many hair-pulling days trying to make it work in IE6 (!!!) and Firefox. Nowadays, there are dozens of jQuery plug-ins that will accomplish the same thing in 3-4 lines of code.

If Wave is as awesome as the demo led everyone to believe, the early adopters will build things to abstract away the complexity, and then we'll be off to the races.

I understand your point, but at the same time I feel that the web is due for change in a lot of ways.

Small incremental updates were only to compensate for what the web lacked, I think as HTML5 grows in adoption we'll start to see far more complex web applications thus something like Wave will be necessary.

For the current state of the web it may sound unnecessary but in the long term I think it will provide a lot of benefit.

And about this line
"...people aren't looking for a replacement for email, or instant messaging..."

I must differ, I'm sick of e-mail and instant messaging right now (I usually use Facebook to communicate with friends) I think Wave will fix that.

htylim says: "I think that what it is most important from google wave it is not the technology behind it...rather the new way it will force us to think how we communicate on internet."

I have to say I agree with htylim on this point: I’ve recently finished a series of articles that illustrate how this change in communication will manifest. The framework is termed “Social Tesseracting”:

“In _Social Tesseracting_: Part 1, we learnt that:

1. Dimensionality defines working concepts of reality.
2. Theoretically, dimensionality can also expand to define a spectrum of nascent social actions.
3. These particular social actions encompass communication trends defined by synthetic interactions.
4. Synthetic interactions create social froth that can be produced geophysically or geolocatively. Both connection types depend on relevant electronic gesturing.
5. This mix of synthetic interactions and electronic gesturing provokes a descriptive framework of this aggregated sodality. This framework is termed Social Tesseracting.
6. In order to adequately formulate Social Tesseracting, contemporary theorists need to extend “valid” reality definitions based currently on the endpoint of the geophysical.”

...an extract of one of these communication-changing social tesseractions/markers:

“e) Information Deformation: akin to process centering, this Social Tesseraction involves a shift in the very definition of information: ‘Information may be defined as the characteristics of the output of a process, these being informative about the process and the input. This discipline independent definition may be applied to all domains, from physics to epistemology.’

These deformed systems of data are constantly in flux and available for perpetual revision. Examples include:

* cloud-based applications
* constantly transliterated google waves.

Users are able to simultaneously modify, update and adapt their input in real time. This type of liminal practice results in a deformation of current information architectures. Although traditional information construction may be flexible over time, it still demands unitary data snapshots for knowledge formation. Deforming such data in real time acts to fundamentally alter meaning production. Socially structured input is the keystone of such a dynamic, perpetually fluctuating system.

Here the notion of Social Froth takes on a new level of importance: information becomes a constantly shifting construct with variable endpoints. Rewiring information in such a way radically changes its cohesive nature. This in turn effects:

* authorship
* politics
* communication and media
* education
* book publishing and academia [think: the perpetuation of potentially obsolete content systems]
* the scientific method
* disciplines dependent on referential instruction [think: History or Commerce].”

…and…

“g) Decline of Silo Ghettos: as information deformation impacts knowledge formation, there’s an increasing need to provide social tesseractors with comprehensive dimensional engagement. This type of borderless interaction deforms monostreams into cross-channelled productions. Social tesseracts assist in addressing the somewhat restrictive walled garden approach to software and platform production [think: the frustration levels encountered whilst experiencing the locked door syndrome].

Google Wave is one system that removes such constraints and allows users to input directly into previously distinct arenas. Other instances of interoperable systems that require the reorientation of Information Silos:

* augmented applications that encourage a pairing of geolocative and geophysical needs.
* bridging software that links previously disparate platforms together [think: IRC-to-Second Life Chat Bridge]“.

The series can be accessed here:
http://arsvirtuafoundation.org/research/2009/03/01/_social-tesseracting_-part-1/

Regards,
@netwurker [Mez Breeze]

Google's notorious for creating brilliant frameworks, toolkits, etc., that are so brilliant no one can figure out quite how to put them to use. Your point is well taken. It remains to be seen what'll happen, but you're right to point out that when the learning curve on any new technology is too steep, or just steep enough that the ends don't clearly justify the means, its days are numbered.

While I usually like what you have to say Anil, this time I couldn't disagree more.

First, there's no need for developers to use the entire stack of protocols to work with wave. Most likely people will build extensions (such as bots) that will interface with just one aspect of wave, through just one protocol.
It's great that Google have made it all open and accessible, but that doesn't mean you have to use all of it.
Many existing tools from other places can probably be easily ported with javascript and open social. That in itself should create a good ecosystem to start with.

Second, while most people probably aren't looking for a replacement to email, many definitely need one but just don't realize it.
Any team that is widely spread geographically or telecommutes uses multiple collaboration tools. That creates a new problem - keeping up with the conversations as they happen in so many places. Bringing even part of that together into one place would be just great.
This is a problem that we're having right now in my startup. We're using google apps anyway, so we're used to the idea of hosted email etc. But we also use other tools like wikis and skype, and I just can't wait for wave to be released so we can try to switch over.

Google is very good at making complex things, then making them simple for users. In a nutshell, that's what software development is all about. Wave may be a complex system with tons of features, but by the time it launches, I'm confident Google will have a simple marketing plan to get the general population to buy into it.

For the development community, Google has a number of avenues (some already implemented, some stated in the preview video, and others that are surely to come). For instance, they can make an easy, integrated abstraction layer with Windows services and Linux packages. Along the same lines, good API documentation, a full-featured SDK, and tons of code samples will go a long way. Lastly, their higher-level plugin system for their client implementation makes weekend-warrior hacking a reality.

I find this account short-sighted, as if http is the only acceptable protocol, that interfaces trump platforms, and that the software driving innovation comes from people who can barely tweak their RSS feeds. Accuse me of building a straw-man, but none of those premises are true.

It is interesting how much you stress the labor and learning curve of the developer vs. the end user's when critiquing Google Wave. RSS's adoption failure was due to a nearly universal poor user experience for consumption and discovery. However, Wave appears to be an accretive approach from the end user perspective, enhancing existing channels with real-time capabilities.

As for XMPP implementations, there are many sites who have wrapped and abstracted the complexity within their API stack, including drop.io, OMGPOP, and even Twitter's private "firehose". For one-off communications, yes, WebHooks and PubSubHubBub type solutions work great for basic web based callback mechanisms, but they aren't an extensible framework. We need both, just as we need JQery and Javascript, Rails and Ruby, etc.

This is a very thoughtful post which had clearly spurred a good conversation. I wanted to add my voice to those who made the point that the audience that matters are the users.

While I don't want to diminish the complexity of the implementation (not least because I haven't a clue about those technologies), I found the overall package extremely compelling. I can't wait to use it !

If there is an audience, the developers will follow. Look at the iPhone, despite all the grumbling, the uptake by developers has been unprecedented.

Also, starting the argument with "this will replace email" is a red herring. It doesn't have to replace anything. It just has to be great.

If it's possible to predict if Wave (or any other technology) will be a major success then it probably isn't radical enough to make a big difference (and vice versa).

So far we don't even know if folks will stick with many existing application such as blogging or social networks for long periods. When I was younger I listened to, and bought, a lot of music. For me, and many others it passed. Sitting at a computer for hours each day is an odd thing for humans to do. Long term I reckon it won't last.

Embedding works too - Anil.

The first part of this article expresses some general truths about success factors of new system deployment which I feel are worth reflecting on - regardless of their applicability to Wave.

Great constructive criticism - thanks for the writeup!

Meebo comes to mind for scaling xmpp/jabber as well - across their platform they service 45+ mm who use it http://www.quantcast.com/p-93vmRJG_BQlqo

Cheers!

I can't argue from what this costs developers. As a potential user, I like the idea of Wave. The way things are done today, there's very little integration of things. Take Twitter. To upload photo to share, you must use a separate non-Twitter site. So bringing that and more together in Wave is very exciting to me.

I think it will excite many other people too.

That said, if Wave winds up with a MySapce/FaceBook-size "usership," wouldn't that be an impetus for devs to tackle the difficult work needed to extend Wave?

... or in other words: Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS).

alternatively, it *is* possible Google could provide the necessary incentive / adoption groundswell by implementing Wave-let apps & Wave support for it's most popular properties (YouTube, Gmail, Maps, iGoogle, etc). with anywhere from 100-500m+ users on those misc services, I'm pretty sure there would be *plenty* of motivation for lots of developers to pile into this Volkswagen bus of Geek Complexity.

(and let's just remember: the Windows API was no paragon of virtue to the Altar of Simplicity, but that didn't stop BillG from driving it onto 100s of millions of PCs... never underestimate the monopolistic ambitionof a powerful incumbent ;)

Anil, Nice article. Google Wave is more technology driven rather than customer driven so it's hard seeing it going mainstream or extending beyond early adaptors anytime soon if at all. It is fantastic to see this type of innovation and I believe that Google are doing all the right things (i.e. open protocols, open source wave server implementations) to push it along the adoption curve but there is a huge amount of friction to overcome starting with the technology stack. I totally agree that Google Wave will spur incremental, wave-like enhancements to the tools we use today.

Excellent Article! - I very much agree, that the simplest only survives on the web - and if a product tries to introduce too many new technologies, it will not be successful in a broad way - and do we really need all this to achieve the new communication paradigm?
> Do we really need a new protocol? - A simple http real-time streaming extension does the same -
> Do we really need a heavy, XML based application run on the client side? - The same can be achieved by a simpler form of Ajax, or even AJAH (HTML and JavaScript, streaming) -

The basic concepts of Colayer are almost identical to Google Wave, but Colayer runs on Web Technologies: See: Colayer and Google Wave, especially the Interview

Email is broken beyond repair.

All that needs to happen is for developers to create gateways between Wave and existing widespread technologies, especially email and IM. If done well, that will take care of the "everybody has to upgrade before it's useful" problem.

I think the issue is a different from the web, which has experienced huge leaps in content, browsing software, etc. You're right, that was incremental, but it's because the upgrade/switching costs were always small. You reaped more benefit by upgrading with very little tradeoff.

That hasn't been the development of e-mail. It's grown barely at all since it was invented, showing that it's not on the same incremental trajectory as the web.

Our communications growth has stagnated because of this, and now new forms are developing to replace it (Twitter, Facebook, Wave). It's because upgrading e-mail always involved high switching costs with little benefit. Even now a ton of different e-mail clients don't properly render HTML.

So Wave is necessarily an attempt to leap forward, because incrementalism has failed in this case.

Dashing insights Anil. :) Your 'Web way' analogy is profound. On similar lines but on a different level, in my blog, I have tried to analyze why Google Wave is not a pure web based application, as they claim ...

Hi,
I have created my response here .
/daniel

I'm not sure e-mail (or Facebook, or twitter for that matter) replaced any existing technology per se, more then they suited a need better then the incumbent were. Wave might, e.g., solve the issue of having too many social platforms to control, and not enough tools to separate contexts rather then service.

Regarding implementation (not being a coder it's hard for me to say, but) I was under the impression that modularity was what allowed you to tweak one bit you understood without making all the rest fall to pieces. Provided Google gives away enough code to inspire aspiring hackers.

— Bertil Hatt

couple of things:

first, thanks for dashing (no pun intended, really) my hopes of going to graduate school. this post, combined with your most recent on all of the change that's coming/has come to the .gov sites pretty much encompasses the core of what i had envisioned my imaginary dissertation to be. seriously, 3 different people all sent me to read your post as they've come to know my obsession with google wave, .gov websites, and most of all... user adoption of said communication tools.

second, you make a good point here: _"And people aren't looking for a replacement for email, or instant messaging, or blogs, or wikis..."_ but... while people might not be looking for a replacement for these things individually, i believe there is a problem to be solved here that does combine all of these mediums. in fact, i'd say finding the right all-in-one technical solution/medium for business communication has been a problem my colleagues and i have come up against every day of my working life since college. there are tools galore out there in the world, but none appear to be perfectly cohesive. honestly, google wave appears to be so from the outset, BUT, no matter how much cool stuff your magic new tool offers, and no matter that it might solve everyone of your communication challenges... it's nothing unless it achieves a critical mass of user adoption. so, what's the tipping point in terms of user adoption? the answer is probably pretty simple, but entirely different depending on the user group... anyhoo, all this makes me think!

thanks for this write up. i enjoyed it very much.

I am quite agree with your point of view.
Just read my post about Google Wave: Google Wave: more a collaboration tool than a communication tool.

Google Wave is currently more a kind of prototype which features could/would be included into next communication tools. At this point, Wave shows the way next tools may take.

Thanks for the article and your review. I have mentioned it on my own article, which is a roundup of early Google Wave reviews:
http://googlewavesucks.com/post/206311509/early-reviews-google-wave-sucks

Collaboration Review - Google Wave & TWIP: http://bit.ly/3viosc