Top 10 Complaints About Google Wave

by Clint Boulton

Wave is not the new killer Internet application. It is not a replacement for Twitter, FriendFeed or Facebook. It’s instant messaging and distributed editing in real time—collaboration on steroids, perhaps, but not the new Twitter.

If you’ve used Wave, then this is just preaching to the choir. Imagine being able to see what multiple writings at the same time looks like—several cursors zipping across the screen. Instead of the one-to-one communications mode of IM, Wave is many-to-many.

Because Wave is so confusing, it will take some time for people to learn how to use it. This isn’t like Twitter, where you can pick up and just run with it. Reading, grokking and working in Waves will take time. Users will have to exhibit patience.

The “social” features in Wave are lacking. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn and other social sites, you can’t see profile biographies or real names, or even manage Wave users and group them. It’s one, big free-for-all. This wouldn’t work for a project management effort.

While we’re learning how to Wave, we’re all going to be really unproductive. Scoble was spot on. This chaos can lead to serious productivity breakdowns. Moreover, unlike e-mail, new Wave content can appear deep down in the in-box.

Welcome to Wave’s Wild West, where everyone is typing at the same time. Wave needs a draft mode so you can type without people seeing you. This will eliminate the distracting cursor pulses.

Anybody can become a Wave contact without permission. In other words, if someone has your user IDs, they can add you to Wave. That needs to change. There need to be permissions.

Not only are there no permissions, but once a Wave is released to the wild, there is no control over it, no one to manage it. Wave might benefit from some Wikipedia-type editorship.

Some geeks take issue with the fact that the document format in Wave is based on XML, not HTML so everyone can display it. This will make it more challenging for developers to build other presentation layers on top of the Wave platform.

People are actually bidding on eBay over Wave invites. That’s right. When asked why, eWEEK was informed that it’s a developer thing. The first programmers to learn about Wave can win the race to build the most useful apps on it. Unhealthy competition?