10 August 2010
Is Google Wave shutdown a sign of move away from social?
When Google Wave came, I jumped. In fact, my entire staff at KAYWEB jumped with joy.
We jumped so high that we credited it for what it was - the most revolutionary communications tool since the email was invented all those years ago.
The keyword (forgive the pun Google) in the above sentence is 'was'.
That's right... Google has ditched Google Wave.
On their Blog, Google acknowledges that when it launched at its Google I/O Developer Conference in 2009, "we showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even "playback" the history of changes-all within a browser. Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops".
But Google concedes "Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked".
Google, long considered the company that turns to gold whatever it touches, has now registered numerous consecutive failures with Google Wave and its Nexus One phone the most spectacular so far considering their very popular releases.
Is the failure of Wave a hint to Google to give up on Social?
Google Buzz, which is Google's answer to Twitter and Facebook, could be next for the chopping block as it too has had a disappointing take-up.
Despite being embedded in Google's hugely popular email client Gmail, Buzz has failed to dent Facebook's and Twitter's growing market shares around the world.
What Google must be wary of is that every shutdown in the Social Web arena results in the loss of loyal fans; many of them developers who spruik Google and the coportate torchbearers of their innovations.
If Buzz is headling downhill, I suggest Google pulls the plug as soon as possible to avoid disappointing more people who land on it, begin thinking about developing apps and extensions for it.
Many did this with Google Wave, and their initial "jumping for joy" is now a sombre version of Michael Jackson's moonwalk backwards to place their ideas and developer tools back into the cupboard.
I believe Google released Google Wave too prematurely.
At the time, Microsoft was about to launch its latest in a long line of search engine offerings in Bing; this time with a mass advertised release designed to take market share off Google's online search empire.
Google panicked and shot early with a buggy version of Wave to dominate trending topics on Twitter and Facebook, as well as dominate water cooler discussions among developers.
Next time, I hope Google reconsiders.
Because Google Wave is an outstanding product. Unfortunately, it is just a bit early for mass adoption.
31 July 2010
PM Julia Gillard goes tech for Federal Election
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard launched the Google Student Voice initiative from the internet giant's Pyrmont offices, while also taking the opportunity to announce the Australian Labor Party's 'political social network', Labor Connect.
The first video below is Gillard's announcement, while the second is a typical Google introductory video to its new initiative.
Latika Bourke was an up-and-coming journalist in the Canberra press gallery until her combination of youthful energy and knowledge of micro-blogging via Twitter made her lead the nation's coverage of the Liberal Leadership spill in late 2009.
Bourke was a mad Tweeter prior to the spill which saw Tony Abbott win the Australian Opposition leadership battle against incumbent Malcolm Turnbull and fellow challenger Joe Hockey.
Her tweeting took career significance on that day.
Bourke was one of a few Canberra journos that I highlighted in a tweet at the time as "ones to follow" if you want to know what's the latest with regards to the spill.
Her efforts helped the hashtag #spill attract global significance as it rose to "trending topic" status on Twitter.
And Bourke picked up a large chunk of new followers who knew she was the one to follow for the latest on this, and future stories, coming out of Canberra.
Bourke's efforts in using Twitter was described as "pioneering" as she received the Walkley Award for Young Australian Journalist of the Year.
Her video interview is below and you can follow her on Twitter @latikambourke.
2010 Young Australian Journalist of the Year - Latika Bourke from Walkley Foundation on Vimeo.
03 June 2010
Will gesture-based gaming take off?
It is interesting to see the Microsoft people at the D8 conference demonstrated the next generation of the X-Box, unveiled under the codename Natal.
This is gesture-based gaming.
See video, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, below:
Do you believe this will take off?
Based on how silly the Microsoft demonstrator looks when showing some of the games in action, I have my doubts :)
An interesting list was released last week, ranking the 1000 most-visited websites on the internet (excluding Google and YouTube). Facebook topped it.
This is hardly surprising considering TIME's cover story on Facebook last week revealed that "1 in 4 people" using the internet not only have a Facebook account, but have visited it in the last 30 days.
This means that 25% of all internet users visited Facebook in the last 30 days!
Others high up in the list include Yahoo, Live and Chinese search engine giant Baidu.
The top 10 included two websites which doesn't have advertising as an option - Wikipedia and Mozilla.
To see the full list of 1000 most-visited websites on the internet, please click here.