Whiteboard

The next ‘big thing’ in mass social communications is supposed to be Google Wave, announced in May and due for launch as a public Beta in a few days time.

Google Wave is designed to create a much broader conversation on the internet than you get from conventional e-mail and there is a lot of ‘early user’ enthusiasm which only makes it more difficult for outsiders to assess.

Our first sight of prototypes suggests a genuinely useful tool that acts as a communications dashboard with a serious commitment to privacy and personal control.

The general view from the techies, who are all aware that Google has an appalling reputation for innovations that don’t then become businesses, is cautiously positive – it works and it meets a need.

Widely touted as an Internet Explorer killer, this, rather than any hype surrounding its challenge to social networking, is where interest will lie in the coming months, creating much fun news copy in the Microsoft versus Google wars.

For the record, Microsoft has 67% of the browser market and Google Chrome has only 3%. Microsoft makes negative claims about Chrome security and Google snipes back but if Wave takes off, it might pose a serious threat to the dominant player. The suggestion that Chrome was created to permit Wave looks increasingly plausible.

Our best guess is that the style of Wave, half way between the traditional browser and the social network, will appeal to a segment of the market that is not entirely happy with either ‘extreme’. It wants more functionality on tap than the traditional browsers provide and it wants more control over its conversations than you can get in the social community.

There were, however, reports that it had been crashing at a rate of 25% of Waves with only 6,000 early users.  The initial 100,000 in the limited release are going to have to be reassured that the crash rate is very small.

But all new technologies have these teething problems. The new economic model permits errors to be seen and be managed by the public during private and public Beta phases - a culture very different from the ‘old’ one that tried to cover up failure and offer claims of perfection that never rang true in practice.

However, the ’spin’ that has centred on its ‘business-friendly’ nature should be treated with a little caution.

The aim, perfectly reasonable, is to get the public out of other tools and into Google’s and use products and services that have been piling up without an adequate central co-ordination point for consumers other than the original search tool.

It has always been a puzzle why the front page of the search engine has never been used effectively to market Google’s full offer. The emergence of Chrome and then Wave might explain this. The search engine is just the biggest tool in the tool-kit but it is not to be confused with the box itself.

There is a bigger picture here. Is a driver for all this also the creation of a mega-integrated platform that the marketing industry can make use of more easily?

Facebook is now used by 83 of North America’s biggest 100 advertisers – that means brands like Nike and AT&T – and this must be unnerving to Google whose massive resources will not protect it in the long run if America’s businesses, if not the world’s, do not use it to reach us on a daily basis.

The prize here is Google ownership of the world biggest integrated meme transit system, transporting all forms of content along its routes. Google is to be to information and service flows what a highway system is to the distribution of goods.

Not a highway but the highway, albeit  in competition as road is in competition with rail, air and shipping. In this analogy, the internet itself is not the highway at all but only the land and sea on which harbours, roads and track are built.

What is transported, of course, is none of the highway’s business, only the Government’s and that of the private individual or business, but Google’s position as the Jay Gould of the post-industrial age is an interesting one. Robber baron or philanthropist like Carnegie?

What Google Wave will become remains uncertain. The promotion of Google Wave as market research tool adds to the business-friendly ambience although little of what we have seen suggests a great deal of credibility in the proposition.

We are not getting overly excited about the claimed business potential. It still strikes us as a half-defensive manoevre.  Google Wave is just another useful tool in the armoury for business but it is not much more than that.

It certainly does not solve the problem of how to get more than a few thousand people clicking in approval on a campaign idea who don’t then forget that they have clicked.

As Wave is presented now, a marketing department might spend many valuable hours having a fascinating but ultimately fruitless debate (in terms of sales) in what may be little more than an entertaining if more efficient forum of the usual suspects.

If there is one thing the early phase of Facebook taught us, it was that mass social network campaigns should not be confused with mass social action.

The paid-for space in the small sidebar on the right hand side of the Facebook Profile page is probably still more valuable for advertisers than Group or Fan Pages that are easily ignored or edited out.

In the end, the claims of the marketing enthusiasts end up meaning more direct e-marketing, a technical and legal minefield if you want new names, or the integration of Wave-related addresses into wider marketing.

How else will you get interested strangers into your Wave? The quality of those being linked to from ‘out there’ might be quite poor unless Wave is used as part of a fairly expensive integrated marketing campaign where its role is, ultimately, ancillary.

Our view – take Google Wave very seriously, watch the space and don’t be surprised to see both some very clever people adapt it to a volatile market and rapid takeup, but don’t allow marketing enthusiasts to experiment with your money, claiming it as the next big thing.

Wait until you have seen two or three good campaigns that make use of it cost-effectively – that may take a fair time yet.