Not too long ago I was introduced to a real-time communication platform and concept that got me thinking...why hasn't this been done before? That was Google Wave. I was the first to jump on the "this will change the way we communicate" bandwagon an must admit, for the time being, I was wrong. That being said, I still believe the platform was a big step in the right direction of creating a more fluid communication environment and if the world was more prepared for the WAVE it would have succeeded.
SO WHY DID IT FAIL?
I am not going to get into the technical aspects of why the Wave failed, as I am by no means an expert in user experience and will not try to be, but I can give my opinion on why it failed from a "market" standpoint.
5 Reasons why the Wave Died
1. The clutter of social tools that surrounded it
There is no doubt that social media has formulated a new "market" in itself and has given users from all over the world and all demographics a new way of communicating. It started with the late teens to twenty-something crowd and now over time has been introduced to all generations. As it caught on, there were some obvious front runners for each type of concept. Facebook leads the friend-to-friend concept, Linkedin and Xing lead the professional-to-professional concept, Twitter leads the status update concept, etc. You get the point. Behind all of those leaders there are many second and third tier competitors and application partners. All of which, perform similar tasks or add a function to the overall experience. There are literally thousands of these "tools" out there to pick from. People become saturated with all these options and we quickly realize that the leaders are going to STAY on top of the leader-board. This HUGE wave (pun intended) of social tools was at it's peak as Google Wave was getting pushed out. The Wave was trying to generate buzz for their NEW concept, when there were thousands of NEW concepts coming at users at the same time. So why should they care about JUST the WAVE? It was presented at a time when users already felt overwhelmed.
2. The Misuse and Lack of Promotion
This is pretty self-explanatory. Google could learn a thing or two from Apple here. Instead of relying on the technology to be the prime "word of mouth" concept for a product, make the people want it based off the coolness factor and not just the "tech" features. The iPod came out surrounded by many of the same devices from other vendors but Apple made the iPod the portable player to have through their masterful marketing and advertising. If they would have released the iPod and just relied on the features to produce enough word of mouth, they would have never taken over the market like they did. Google didn't promote the Wave to users outside of our blogosphere. Social gurus knew about it but that is clearly not enough to make an impact. Next time Google has a new tool they need to spend some money to make the product cool to people who don't want to understand the technological advantages.
3. Adaptation Defeated it's Own Purpose
The whole idea of Google Wave was to reduce the amount of clutter and time for the user and unfortunately because the tool involved so many moving parts, it just seemed confusing to the average user. Even when I explained some of the features to my friends who do not work in the tech field, they seemed confused. So imagine an average user entering the Google Wave interface and trying to navigate their way around. It would most likely seem a little cluttered, and on the surface level would not intrigue the user enough to spend the time to move ahead with it. There were some learning curves for the Wave and to put it simple, the average user just didn't want to spend the time to learn it. And why should they, with that lack of coolness?
4. Why use Wave when Nobody Else Uses it?One of the most obvious reasons for Google Wave's demise was the lack of use and interest among peer groups. So a user joined Wave....great....what next? Let's find friends. Where are my friends? This was a common problem. Even if a few friends joined and you communicated on the Wave platform, many times you would still revert back to your old methods of communication such as email, Facebook, etc. Why? Because you were there to talk to ALL the people that were not on Wave, so you figure why not reach out to everyone there? Even your Wave friends. It was more convenient. If Google would have advertised - (problem 3) they would have given new users a larger pool of people to interact with.
5. No Specific Target MarketLet's say Google would have promoted the Wave more. Based on their promotion strategy they would have been promoting the Wave to EVERYONE. That is a lot of people. At no point in the process of promoting the Wave did Google seem to pick a target market. Instead they relied on their dominant presence in Email (Gmail) and the overall web (Google Search) and tried to push the Wave to everyone that used their other services. There was no direct audience for the product...had Google focused on a target market, let's say small business owners -and showed those small business owners how useful the tool could be for their internal company communication, they maybe would have won - in that market. From there they could have expanded and THAT would have been generated by Word of Mouth from the people working at small businesses. Just a thought?
So I will be the first to say, I was wrong. At least 75% wrong. Google still plans to use some of the features in their other product lines, so we will see where that goes over the next few years. But I thought the Wave was the next BIG thing. Here's to hoping my next BIG THING statement comes true.
