We knew the day was coming. Ever since Google announced the discontinuation of the failed social media… something… that they launched 3 years ago, the hundreds of avid users were given ample time to collect their virtual belongings and move them elsewhere. Posts were frozen in January, two months after the announcement of the terminal condition of… something… that kept Wave from picking up steam, and now the site is officially going completely dark.
If any of the dozens of people who were using it regularly are reading this, move your content now or lose it forever. The tubes have been pulled and the site will officially cease to exist today.
Or will it? The Apache Software Foundation took matters into their own hands and have been developing Wave for… something… since 2010. You can find it at Wave in a Box.
Related articles
- Google Wave Officially Shut Down (techie-buzz.com)
- Google Wave Closes Today, Move Out While You Still Can (webpronews.com)
- Google Wave is Back, Called Google Drive And Gives Google More Grip (stateofsearch.com)
- Google Wave reaches zero amplitude (engadget.com)
- Google Wave officially dead as Google prepares to shut down (electronista.com)
- Wave Goodbye to Google Wave (geeknewscentral.com)
This article is not complete without mentioning the startups that found Google Wave to be so productive for their own work, that they were literally forced to develop their own products.
There are several startups that have been inspired by Google Wave:
*Â http://rizzoma.com/Â - free and open source, it continues and expands the Google Wave philosophy with cool features like tasks and Twitter-like mentions.
*Â http://co-meeting.com/Â - very similar to Google Wave at first glance, but seems to focus more on meetings.
*Â http://runby.me/Â - a B2B service for companies that go heavy on text-based communications. It is designed to support both email and hosted conversations within a single UX, allows to assign tasks and keep track of them, and has built-in workflows for general communications, helpdesk, Kanban and sales.
I bet there are others out there. Google Wave was not about social – it was a business communication tool that was not positioned and packaged properly.