Google Wave Part 2: The end of traditional media?
1. Google Wave Part 1: The Introduction
2. Google Wave Part 2: The end of traditional media?
3. Google Wave Part 3: The Preview
4. Google Wave Part 4: Invites give away
What is happening?
Many consider the recent events on the Internet as the start of a new information age. In fact we just left the information age and entered the communication age. A new generation of media is rising and it's rising fast. Traditional media companies are trying to find their way on the worldwideweb but are failing miserably as they simple can't comprehent the new economic laws.
Many knew that this was going to happen and some feared that twitter, wikipedia,... and/or other modern Internet communication media would start this process. Fortunately for the old school dinosaurs in the media industry this was not case, until now.
Wave?
The new media are based and centred around the people that use it. A website like Digg[1] let's the community decide what news is relevant and what news is important to them. Users trust their friends and community and follow their suggestions. These platforms are based around a very simple principle: users decide what, how and when.
Google wave is not merely an other platform or another communication network. It is THE communication network. It emphasises the collaboration between users and roles in the form of waves. These waves can be used to support all other social-, business-, news- ,.. networks.
New Media?
But there is more. Google wave itself will be the base of this new user centred media: collaborative news.
- Wave is the SVN[2] of information. Imagine a centralised place (behind a perma link) that can be accessed by many for many. News reporters can collaborate on 1 piece of information in real time. Witnessess can add pictures and information,..
- Wave can also be used to send out information about this news over all social network sites. (twitter.digg.facebook)
- Wave can be customized to become a CMS system for online newspapers.
- Wave is build on new open (source) protocol.
- Wave will change the way news is made
- Wave = (email + chat + wiki + groupware + computer supported cooperative work) *live
Wave is the new news.[3]
So?
Google Wave proves that Google has outsmarted the industry once again. Not by creating competition for the current Internet trends (like twitter, facebook,..) but by creating a platform that embraces all the trend. Now and in the future.
Google is allready the biggest player in infomation management[3] and it seems that Google Wave will make them the biggest information contributer.
What do you think?
About
Name: Steven Houben
Location: Belgium
Interested in: General Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Software Engineering, Psychology, Sociology, science and technology in general....Read More
November 12th, 2009 - 16:02
Maybe Google Wave has the shiny-ness to make it more fascinating, but there already is a Wikinews, and they’re about to shut down the dutch version because there’s not enough writing activity. If that isn’t an SVN of information, I don’t know what is. Just because you can’t see what the others are doing in realtime doesn’t mean you can’t just write a piece and add it while someone else is writing theirs.
Collaboration might be becoming more comfortable, but I seriously doubt it will change people in any fundamental way.
Also, if everything works out, the open protocol will allow the whole Wave concept to go beyond Google, sidestepping the issue of making them the biggest player in information contribution (platforms).