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What are ways to use Google Wave?

I received my invite to Wave a month or two ago and haven't touched it since. Yes, I've read all the Wikipedia and Lifehacker articles on it. It looks like it could be fun and useful, but I have no idea why, despite all of the information and hype surrounding it. So my question is a practical one: How and why would I incorporate it into my daily life?

Remember the mid-90s when you first opened a browser, full of excitement, wishing you knew more than 3 websites to browse? Well this isn't quite that monumental, but that's kind of how I feel with Wave right now. I'm poised and ready to click on something or invite somebody, but what do I do after that?

Answer 1

I expect Google Wave to be a way for early discussions over the Internet in a way like one would do near a whiteboard or over a coffee table. It would be a better replacement for gmail thread conversations for example.

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From Google Wave About page.

1. Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration.
2. Equal parts conversation and document: can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more
3. Shared: Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
4. Live: With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

^{There are other things that you may have already read too...
A Wikipedia page and more locally at What are ways to use Google Wave?
Further, a guide at Mashable and a critique at TechCrunch.}

Answer 2

I see it as a quicker, more visual way to communicate and collaborate.

Answer 3

I consider Google wave as a mashup technology. It's what happens when you distill instant messaging, IRC, email and NNTP into 1 convergent form. If your collaborative efforts revolve around any of these types and could benefit from branching out or grouping them together then you might find Google Wave useful. Your mileage may vary.

Answer 4

I just got mine and haven't done anything with it yet. It seems to me to be basically a shared private wiki page, though.

Answer 5

Maybe nobody knows what the purpose is, yet. Just like SMS, when it was invented, nobody knew what the user would do with it respectively how intensively they would use it.

Answer 6

I think this summary is the best that I have seen so far: google wave is not a social media tool, it is a tool for getting work done - daniel tenner

Answer 7

I use wave as a tool for project collaboration. I currently have 3 big projects with different members and whenever an idea is born it is posted on wave and we can discuss it there. Also if someone finds information that is useful for someone it can easily be shared.