Catching the Wave

I won’t let my pup off her leash or run loose in the yard because I don’t want to worry about her chasing cars. Like all dogs, she wouldn’t know what do if she did catch a Ford, Chevy or Honda. Although growing up in Newport I remember my neighbor’s dog would chase their car down until he caught them at the grocery store, school or out to eat. That dog had plan when he caught them.  He would get in, stick his head out the window and enjoy the ride.

When I got an invitation to Google Wave recently I found myself looking at the new application (and form of communication) from a dog’s perspective. Now I’ve got it, what am I going to do with it? I started finding who else has got access, with 100,000 initial invitations surely I can run down a few folks. It didn’t take long to find a few. It’s good to know I’m not the only one that likes being an early adopter.

So far I have just begun to get started in discovering the basics of Wave. It is a great mix of the things we all enjoy from Twitter and Facebook. Real time communication and a stream or wall. The wall is much better than Facebook in that links, elements and digital assets can be attached to the conversation in a threaded manner to reference a point. I can see where Wave has the potential to shoot down Twitter.

I see a lot great opportunities for Wave once it goes public. This is the type of service that can keep viewers glued to a well managed website and  justify higher CPM rates publishers need. I will revisit the well managed part in a later post.

One thing I would suggest for news sites to do now – invest in developing a “Potty Mouth” robot. If you are unfamiliar with the Wave terminology, a robot is an automated participant (program) that will interact with the content brought into the wave. The robot could replace banned words with kinder, gentler ones. A side function for the robot could be to scan the content and place CPA advertisements and product offers in the consumer action areas of the Wave. CPA usually have a larger payout than CPM when it is matched to content.

For now, I’ve caught the vehicle called Wave, so I’m just going to hop in and enjoy the ride. If you are in the Wave preview, feel free to add gizmotastic@googlewave.com to your contacts.