While this looks like an interesting research project, I'm not sure if it's going to get any traction. E-mail is so entrenched at this point -- if whatever "Next Big Thing" that comes down the pipe doesn't interact well with the existing infrastructure, it's hard to see how it'll be a success.
Maybe Google Wave has a great integration story for working w/ existing e-mail systems. If so, I haven't seen that yet.
I think it is a mistake to think that a product will be unsuccessful simply because the bootstrap problem is difficult.
Not only that, its unclear if the bootstrap is as difficult as you make it out to be. Writing an interop with regular email should not be very hard - there will be loss of context and wave should represent a more interesting communication mode, but it should still be able to get the information out to people over email.
Bear in mind that nobody expects wave to replace email in a year. But if your horizon is more like 5 years, things seem a lot more reasonable.
My gut feeling is that this is going to get a lot of traction and be really popular. Within a year of general release.
I was doubtful when I first heard of email+flickr+youtube+IM. I thought it would be a mess. I thought it would flop like google sites.
The implementation looks slick though. If they can somehow shoehorn this into gmail with "send as Wave" or something it might take off. Or if facebook licenses it or some new social site works it into their offering.
I hope it takes off cause it looks cool from the choreographed video.
3 comments:
While this looks like an interesting research project, I'm not sure if it's going to get any traction. E-mail is so entrenched at this point -- if whatever "Next Big Thing" that comes down the pipe doesn't interact well with the existing infrastructure, it's hard to see how it'll be a success.
Maybe Google Wave has a great integration story for working w/ existing e-mail systems. If so, I haven't seen that yet.
I think it is a mistake to think that a product will be unsuccessful simply because the bootstrap problem is difficult.
Not only that, its unclear if the bootstrap is as difficult as you make it out to be. Writing an interop with regular email should not be very hard - there will be loss of context and wave should represent a more interesting communication mode, but it should still be able to get the information out to people over email.
Bear in mind that nobody expects wave to replace email in a year. But if your horizon is more like 5 years, things seem a lot more reasonable.
My gut feeling is that this is going to get a lot of traction and be really popular. Within a year of general release.
I was doubtful when I first heard of email+flickr+youtube+IM. I thought it would be a mess. I thought it would flop like google sites.
The implementation looks slick though. If they can somehow shoehorn this into gmail with "send as Wave" or something it might take off. Or if facebook licenses it or some new social site works it into their offering.
I hope it takes off cause it looks cool from the choreographed video.
Any chance on getting me into a beta? :)
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