the general consensus on a geek list to which i subscribe was this -- and I trust this crowd to know what's up since they're where I always learn first about everything -- years before it happens because they actually work for google, microsoft, apple, sun, amazon, and the like.
From: "Reza B'Far" <reza at voicegenesis.com> To: "Friends of Rohit Khare" <fork at xent.com> Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 09:26:29 -0700 Message-ID: <EDEELGIMKDLHMAPJOMOGIEIEIHAA.reza at voicegenesis.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1896 In-Reply-To: <8092dc770906060013w6da43d9amda0cb65a0c2faeeb at mail.gmail.com> Importance: Normal Subject: [FoRK] Google Wave - Reset, Observations, and Questions
<...> 3. Why is it assumed that a "prettier" message is a "better" message (seems to be assumed in the video about Google Wave). I'm curious to see what people think on this thread, but there is a reason I don't put a million smilies, colors, etc. in my email, particularly at work. The amount of cosmetic garbage in what I saw in that demo makes my brain hurt. Do people really spend most of their time in messaging sending around pictures and talking about useless crap when you exclude the under 25 crowd? I saw a single feature that I thought would help productivity and that was the ability to manage forked threads... but then tools like Thunderbird already sort of have that. Did anyone see any other key productivity features?
Most of what I saw in Google Wave in the video was cosmetic sugar... 1-2 features were really cool. I wonder if that's a descent assessment and if that's the case, then can you create large market penetration and monetize based on that strategy.
Reza" -- totally right on reply:
" You're close to the point, but still missing it. Google is an advertising company, and those under-25 people are the only ones even remotely susceptible to advertising when we live in a world where we see 1000s of ads every day.
So of course they are working on something that's hip and will pull in the pre have-a-job-and-life crowd, that's the target! Nothing I saw was new (if you're old enough to have seen it before, you're too old to work at Google), and none of it has any productivity gains baked in.
It will push eyeballs to ads, so it's a winner.
-- Adam L. Beberg http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/"