Looking for a ticket to the season’s hottest social media party? You’ll have to wait in line — Google Wave is by invitation only.
More Top Picks Best Sensory Swings For Adults
The online communication and collaboration tool that makes real-time interactions more seamless and lets you communicate using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and more has been getting some serious buzz for the past few months. The buzz turned electric late last week after Google sent out 100,000 invitations to Wave’s beta program.
So why is Google Wave being touted as the next Twitter or Facebook? The features take what we love about social media now and expands them with an almost live component.
If you are one of the lucky invitees, here’s what you have to look forward to:
According to Google’s Wave page, a wave is a conversation with multiple participants — participants are people added to a wave to discuss and collaborate on its content. Participants can reply any time and anywhere within a wave, and they can edit content and add more participants as a wave develops. It’s also possible to rewind waves with the playback functionality, to see what happened, and when.
One thing is clear. Google has been paying attention to the shortcomings of Twitter and Facebook — neither stress the importance of collaboration and conversation. And neither makes it easy to see what you’ve missed if you join a conversation late. Google Wave can catch you up with the push of a button and it lets you add the people you want to add to your wave.
So how do you get an invite? If you didn’t request one a few months back when Google opened its request list, you may be out of luck this time around. But the request an invite page is still up at tr.im/Apdh. And if you really can’t wait, search eBay. Several auctions are still going on.
I’ll be keeping you up to date on the progress of Google Wave over the coming months and hoping I receive my invite soon.
What about you? Have you tried Google Wave or do you have an invite? Tweet me, poke me — just tell me. And if you give me an invite, we can wave to each other.