Get ready, here comes the Google Wave

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on July 17th, 2009

I have been thinking about the new opportunities that will come with Google Wave. This certainly has created some great discussion here at AHA.

The description from Wikipedia is: Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool” announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by robust spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 languages, and numerous other extensions. It is expected to be released later in 2009.

Google Wave has the ability to change how we get our news. However, keep in mind, it’s how we use it that is important. Valeria Maltoni has a great blog post on it at Social Media Today and Jeff Jarvis has also weighed in – and his thoughtful analysis and expertise always provides great perspective. (Take a read of the comments on Jeff’s post, they are very interesting.)

In her post, Valeria wonders if Google Wave eliminates the need for media relations and Jeff writes: “Imagine a team of reporters – together with witnesses on the scene – able to contribute photos and news to the same Wave (formerly known as a story or a page). One can write up what is known; a witness can add facts from the scene and photos; an editor or reader can ask questions. And it is all contained under a single address – a permalink for the story – that is constantly updated from a collaborative team.”

The use of Google Wave could transform how we share news and information. I think that it could enhance a communicator’s media relations efforts. If the story was about your organization, you could weigh in with your perspective or some information on the background of the specific topic or the industry. Your organization could cover its own news and reach directly out to traditional media, bloggers and citizen journalists, as well as your stakeholders or community and drive them to your Google Wave platform. It’s a huge opportunity for communicators to help participate in interactive journalism and I know that we’re going to encourage AHA clients to look at this closely.

There are a lot of good stories that don’t get told by mainstream media – for a lot of reasons. Lack of space, the story isn’t one that would be of interest to a larger audience (but it is to a smaller group), lack of time, and sometimes because there was another more interesting story (or a better pitch) that came in and took priority. That doesn’t mean that your story isn’t worth telling. 

I am sure that as we learn how to use Google Wave there will be some glitches to work out and one of the questions that came up here at AHA and as a comment on Jeff’s blog is that with all of the live reporting that can come in on a story on Google Wave, what happens next? Will there be an article written about the entire event, incident or activity that was at the heart of the communication interaction? I think that’s where both journalists and communicators come in. I think there is the potential for both media and communicators to write articles that put all of the pieces into perspective. The process of using Google Wave will be an interesting one. It could make a huge impact on the evolution of communication we are currently experiencing.