Google: Not waving but drowning

Google has suffered a rare defeat in the world of social media this week, as it was announced development on its flagship social product, Wave, will be stopped at the end of the year due to lack of interest.

Google Wave was the internet giant’s answer to sites such as Facebook, allowing real-time collaboration, chat and file-sharing. It combined email and chat facilities and linked them to other popular social media sites, such as Twitter.  It was originally launched in September 2009 and received a warm, if not ecstatic, reception from users and critics.
However, the currency of social media is user attention and, despite a reasonable take-up, Google Wave failed to attract enough members to create strong and self-sustaining communities.

Consequently, Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of Operations at Google, announced last week: “We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects”.

Wave is an incredibly complex platform and Google intends to apply the technology and lessons learnt from it to future products, although no-one from the company is prepared to state what these might be or how the technology will be applied.

What the demise of Wave does demonstrate is the power that social media invests in users, by their own admission, Google failed to get enough ‘traction’ for the platform, ultimately leading to its withdrawal. The creation and sustaining of viable online communities is central to any social media success, and it is here that Google fell short, as sadly, no-one waved back.