Make Waves with Google Wave

What is Wave?

To understand what this site is about, first you must understand the difference between Google Wave and WaveCenter.

Google Wave is a new technology—currently in testing and not released to the public—that is poised to revolutionize the way people communicate. It is a platform that combines all the functionalities of email, chat, forums, social networking, multimedia and more into a unified platform that can be easily extended with more functionality and embedded into virtually any other website. Google is planning a full release some time in 2010.

WaveCenter is a next-generation social networking site that will be based on the Google Wave platform. Since it will be built from the ground up on Google Wave, the site will naturally provide a much greater range of features and better usability than any of the leading social networks today (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.). But the advances offered by WaveCenter won’t stop there. Following are some of the ways that WaveCenter will take social networking to the next level:

• Results Oriented – The WaveCenter slogan says it all: “Make Waves”. WaveCenter is focused on helping people accomplish their goals—not just twitter their lives away. Whether the member’s objective is to find a job, meet friends, get a politician elected, play chess, fight a disease, find a date, save the environment or anything else, the system is designed to help them identify, refine, and achieve their objectives using all the tools, information and networking capabilities available at their fingertips.

• Life Management Tools and Resources – WaveCenter is about much more than just networking. Ultimately it is about members managing their lives to make them simpler, more productive, and more fulfilling. Members will have tools to help them manage their finances and assets, their media, personal relationships, their home, their health, education, transportation, and the list goes on.

• Member-driven Product Development – In order to provide very useful and focused applications, WaveCenter will employ a unique product development process that begins with solicited requests from members. These requests will be successively refined through a collaborative product life-cycle system with feedback loops at every stage. Through a partnership with our companion website WaveLab.com—a community of Google Wave developers using state-of-the-art development practices—we will rapidly deploy new product features as fast as members request them.

• Crowd-sourced Support – Most traditional social networks and community forums have adopted a volunteer/community support approach where support is free but a user may or may not (and more likely not) get a qualified response their problems in a timely fashion. WaveCenter will use a tiered, crowd-sourced support system where qualified members are actually compensated for providing support to fellow members. So members who seek support in accomplishing their goals can confidently expect to get that support through the WaveCenter community.

• Built-in Ecosystem – The support mentioned above may not always be free, depending on the nature of the request. WaveCenter will provide a mechanism whereby assistance can be monetized. In fact, a wide range of member activities can be incentivized, including: helping other members, helping define product requirements, developing products, developing training or help documents, promoting WaveCenter or affiliated services, etc. Members who get very involved in supporting the WaveCenter community could earn substantial incomes.

• Algorithmic Credibility Scoring – Various types of sites allow members to rate other participants. Ebay is perhaps the best example of this. Thus far, such systems have relied primarily on user feedback ratings with some other basic metrics (i.e. how many transactions done). WaveCenter will utilize all the data available through the system, in addition to peer ratings, to determine members credibility scores. Because the scores will factor in various aspects of visitor behavior, it will yield a more accurate reflection of users’ credibility than one that can be more easily gamed. These credibility scores will help members determine how to respond to each other. They are a great way to keep members on their best behavior.

• Self-learning Mechanisms – While many existing social networks analyze visitor behavior through web analytics, usability testing or focus groups, WaveCenter will be designed from the ground up to record all aspects of member behavior (anonymously, of course) in order to gain insights about how they use the website. This will result in knowledge about what visitors want and need, how they respond to the interface and what motivates them. The plan is to be able to use this data to do predictive modeling so we will know what members want even before they know it themselves.

While all of the above innovations are planned out in detail, their implementation, of course, awaits the release of Google Wave.