Google Wave's Phased Beta is Disappointing | Hacker News Reader

Google Wave's Phased Beta is Disappointing

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40 pointsamitu33 comments

I know we've been over this a million times before, but the whole "FAIL" thing really turns me off. I actually agree with the points but had to force myself to click the link because I immediately assumed the OP was a linkbating troll.

I like #fail, it is short and poignant.

Your complaint seems to be that few people are logged on at any one time, but that's not necessary to use Wave. It isn't a very good IM system anyway, so it's pointless to try to use it that way.

http://danieltenner.com/posts/0012-google-wave.html

There are relatively few people who have logged in to Google Wave ever, which is just dumb for a product that relies so heavily on network effects to be attractive.

Wave's invitation system is definitely flawed (I need invites for my whole team, not just myself), but IMO amitu is criticizing Wave for the wrong reason.

I believe they tried to get around this problem by giving each person 10 invites. Some people sold them, other people invited their friend or team which made it more useful.

Yeah, I was given 20 nominations, and decided to pass them to most of my team, then realized our team is way too big :)

I'm also a little surprised by the author's criticism of having no one logged on at the same time. In our limited application of it, the value is not exclusively in real time communication, but in a better organized (non-linear) communication timeline.

The equivalent to his complaint would be that nobody was looking at their mail client at the very moment that he sent them an email. Luckily. you don't have to know anything about how Google Wave works in order to declare it a failure!

Google Wave is not in beta. It's in public preview. Right now they're not interested in being useful to you or any other user; they're still building and designing the damn thing. The only reason they let you on is so they have a bunch of new user activity to process.

The very fact that people are complaining that it's disappointing means that Google is doing just fine. It might be disappointing to you, the eager early adopter, but it's not stupid on their part. The very fact that you want to have all your friends come use it (I do too) means that whenever Google does decide to open the tap, they will have all the users they want.

The network effect is crucial for getting a new communications tool off the ground. And as soon as Google wants to take advantage of the network effect, they'll give you and me some more invitations and I assure you, we won't have any problem finding folks to accept. In the meantime, we're still playing in Google's sandbox.

EDIT: Incidentally, as further evidence of the fact that Google is leveraging exactly as much of the network effect as they feel like leveraging: the thing it does where anybody in your GMail contacts is automatically added to your Google Wave contact list is fuckin' brilliant. It's a great way to encourage use, by making sure that as many people as I'm likely to be interested in using Wave with are directly accessible to be contacted, without my even having to say, 'So, did you get a Google Wave invite? Let me know when you're in and we'll chat!'

Thanks for saying it the way it is. Wave is on "Preview", meaning its definitely NOT beta or even Alpha. What "preview" basically means that "we are building a system and we want live testers as we scale and add features", they are not "bug fixing", they are "implementing features" on live users.

Wave users are viewing the changes and features added live, hence "preview".

However, 'beta' IS the traditional word for this situation, it's just that Google (principally) has butchered and mutated the meaning of beta over the last few years, to the point where people view 'beta' as meaning 'open to all, but no guarantees' (except when it comes to video game testing, there the traditional meaning of beta stands).

The deeper message "invites should go out to social circles" is spot on. Gmail's rollout policy worked because our network was already accessible (via other email providers).

For something inherently social without a pre-seeded network like wave, it only makes sense to roll it out to social clusters.

Can you think of a better mechanism for seeding a finite number of slots to social clusters than giving everybody X invites to share?

From what I hear, the people at the start of the chain have nearly all of their friends on Wave, while the people at the edges (us) have only 10 or so at the moment. As more invites go out the system will get more useful for us

Although I have many questions as to the actual utility of wave, I don't think the invitation mechanism is really at fault.

There was some confusion since Gmail invites take effect immediately but Wave invites just put people on a waiting list; this turned out to be not as bad as it sounds since apparently the waiting list is moving pretty fast. Even a few days delay to get your team on Wave is disappointing some people, though.

I agree that the invite process is all wrong, but for a different reason. Google should be encouraging users to invite others for a practical purpose, ie working on a project together. Having a specific purpose in mind when being invited to Wave would greatly help people understand and evaluate the usefulness for collaboration. Instead, people just clamor for invites to try out the hyped new thing by Google rather than to fulfill any real need they have, and then click around randomly, use Wave like a chat, and get annoyed when "nobody's online". They're setting people up for disillusionment and disappointment this way.

Thank you for removing the "FAIL" non-sense from the title. So sick of that meme.

I am definitely sick of the word 'meme'.

To be honest, I am not at all surprised at the frustration most people are seeing with the Google Wave invite system. What I am surprised, is that so many people did not seem to expect it.

What people are forgetting is that this system is a closed proprietary system, unlike GMail. Yes, invites to GMail were scarce, and if I remember correctly even sold for hundreds of dollars on ebay. The difference between GMail and Google Wave (GWave? yes/no? ;) is that when you were invited to gmail, you were invited to use a new "interface" of an existing and mature protocol - email. You didn't have to wait to "show off" your gmail account to your friends, you simply had to send them an email.

Google Wave requires mass adoption of something that is inherently closed (unless they open this protocol to other companies) and so will suffer from a slower adoption rate, and as a consequence, a lower utility rate, even if the invite system ceases to exist at all.

To be honest, I'm not sure if this is an issue. Many of my friends who got invites seem to think that Google Wave is going to revolutionize _chat_, but I don't think this was ever the claim. It may yet revolutionize collaboration, but in order to collaborate effectively you don't need to just sit there and wait for people to log on -- start a wave, invite some friends, and watch it evolve.

edit: to follow up on my 'non issue' comment. My point is that for Google Wave to be useful, only those who wish to collaborate together will really need to adopt it, not your entire google contact list. If a company signs up their domain for google wave, you can be almost certain that they will make much better use of it than I will with my group of friends on an individual level

The beta is a closed proprietary system, but it won't always be that way. Google created a proprietary implementation of an open protocol and has created an open source client/server implementation.

Check out http://www.waveprotocol.org/

It's my understanding that you could implement your own wave server which could then interoperate with Google's wave server.

The "Google Wave" web client that's in beta now may always be a proprietary item, but it's my understanding that you could create your own wave client as well.

Thanks for the link. This actually makes quite a bit of sense both in the way google has done business in the past -- with Chrome and even the Google Chat server, and of course from an adoption point of view.

"(unless they open this protocol to other companies)"

http://www.waveprotocol.org/

I am always put off by the "limited supply" approach of Google. Disclaimer: I did not get a Wave invite, maybe because I did not even apply, but still. So they seem to think I am not cool enough for their product. Guess what, I don't want to kneel down and beg for an invite. I'll look for other stuff to do instead.

How is taking 30 seconds to fill out a form anything like "kneel down and beg"?

I meant in general, that would be the case where you fill out the form and don't get an invite. Then you would go to beg on Twitter or ebay. Of course I am not complaining that I didn't get an invite without even applying.

Still, asking a woman "would you like to sleep with me" also only takes 5 seconds, but there is a lot of dignity to lose if she says no.

I don't think you would lose any dignity by asking for a Wave invite.

I don't see how what you think is relevant to how I feel about it.

Maybe it really is only the beta scarcity, but then perhaps they could sell it better. Ever since Orkut I just assume it is a scheme to make it look cool.

While I do agree that it certainly helps when demand is higher than supply in terms of customer interest, this is certainly not the main reason for the Google Wave invite/nomination system.

I just got my invite today, and having used it extensively for a few hours, I can tell you a few things for certain: It is quite buggy, and still feels QUITE sluggish. Thus, it is in their interest to open this up to "early adopters" before the main population since they are more willing to tolerate these bugs. Furthermore, from following some of their twitter posts/blog posts, it seems like they are still struggling with scaling the system itself, contributing in the slow down in approving invites/"nominations" (it took my nomination 4 days to get approved, I don't think they're doing it to frustrate me once I've been invited ;)

Agh, this is such a shortsighted opinion. Guess what: it's not done yet. That's what beta means. When it's done, you can have it for free. Until then, the system supports < demand, so you're gonna have to beg or know someone who knows someone.

It's interesting to me that other company seems to have this problem: when a new startup has a closed beta, people tend to be excited that the company is innovating and testing a new system. When Google rolls out a beta, people get angry because they don't get to play with it yet.

What's annoying to me is that some of the same people panning Wave for being useless are also criticizing the slow invite process: You can't say cake sucks, AND be pissed you can't have any yet! (note: this is not directed specifically at your comment, it's just something I've noticed in general.)

Fair enough, I can see the beta angle. However, they have a history of doing this stunt to make things look cool (think Orkut), so I just assume it is a scheme. Also, giving people invites to spread does not make it very plausible that they just want to keep the user numbers down.

For example, they gather valuable information from the invites: who is connected to whom. I don't think these things are an accident, if Google does it.

I got a cheap invite off eBay (about $4.50) so I could get stuck in with the D&D side of things. So far, I'm still confused, having never played a D&D, but slowly getting there.

Agreed.

The #1 goal of a platform is adoption. Maybe I'm reading Google Wave wrong, but it does seem to be a platform. So unless you're adjusting for scale, why would you do anything at all to slow adoption? In fact, Twitter's failures to increase capacity didn't seem to hurt it as much as not making it completely open would have.

Because it's not really ready for public consumption. It's still pretty buggy. To roll out now would make all those flaws public.

Indeed - it's not a beta, it's a "preview". Really, it's a late alpha.

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