Google's "Wave" next?

In the “Further Proof that just doing a new viewbook isn’t enough” column I file Google’s Wave. The short review on CNN today is enough to both make me salivate with possibilities and give me a bit of panic about how I’m going to keep up.

If you read the Buzzmachine blog or have read “What Would Google Do?” by Steve Jarvis you are pretty well aware of how blogs, Twitter, and social networking and media sites have changed a lot about how information gets transmitted. But Wave has me wondering if it isn’t about time for another game changer. Anyone noticed that friends aren’t “Facebooking” as much anymore? I know it is still growing, but when the biggest current growth is among 50 year plus women, I tend to start to wonder where the 20-30 somethings are going.

It’s an old joke, but I can tell you the exact day Facebook lost its cool - the day I joined. I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense to use it, expand it, and revolution it as a platform, but what’s true in the world of communication gurus is that there is always a platform lurking out there.

I have started to envision it as a cold war arms race between the tech people and communicators. For every missile they build, we adapt some new technology to our use, and then they get around our processes by building a new missile. Of course, like all analogies this one is fatally flawed because the tech people don’t really want to destroy us, they are just being creative geniuses who want to build a better widget.

However, sometimes trying to get my arms around all the tech stuff I’m feeling a little crushed.