Google Wave As a Social Networking Tool – Whats in it for my Interest or Profession? P2

Well, After a month or  more with Google Wave my initial take was, at least, partially wrong.  Although I’ve talked, Waved and Tweeted with many that had the same initial opinion, Google Wave is not relative to the amount of contacts you have (as I first thought). I will however, stick by may first comment that, an Objective for your Wave is essential. But at first, just searching is all you need to know how to do in order to see the potential or as some say “Game Changing” tool that is Google Wave.

Google Wave is not only private collaboration, It is also Public and this is where the magic happens (in the beginning). I’m sure many are aware, but there is an accessible Wave community and they probably share the same interest, both personal and professional, as you. With a few simple commands you can open the door to vast possibilities with Wave and build a network of contacts just as you might with Facebook or Twitter. This is done by Public searches and creating public Waves, which is simple, but requires some precautions that I will discuss in this post. There are many functioning add-ons and extensions that I have found are simple and add functionality to my Waves that I will also discuss.

How is Wave similar to Facebook or Twitter and what is different?

Staying Current in the Conversation Timeline: 1st and most notable Wave operates on a Public timeline just as Twitter and Facebook updates, and is searchable by subject or Wave content. You may not see this when you first open Wave, but it is there once you enter the community. The most powerful difference to me, is the ability to focus a Wave on specific content and it maintains ranking in the timeline as other Wavers comment in the Wave. This to me is important because your best Tweets and Facebook updates tend to get lost in highly active conversations. This means that for you to maintain a ranking in the timelines for both Facebook and Twitter you must be highly active in your updates on that subject and could become an annoyance to those that may follow you. With Wave you can state your subject once and as others join in the conversation your ranking in the timeline maintains with all comments on that subject.

Subject oriented following: The 2nd notable difference is the ability to have many conversations on many subjects without annoying those that follow you. With Wave you can point specific subjects towards specific contacts without others being borated with ADHD type updates. In my short time on Twitter i have found these ADHD type updates to be a problem with those that i follow and those few that follow me. For example, I am using twitter to point myself toward specific content for my personal and professional interest, but my tweets are all over the place. Even though I tend to follow those that i value for my personal and professional interest their tweets are all over the place as well. My twitter timeline is quite loaded with tweets that are on varying subjects with no sense of organization other than the lists I create. With Wave I can put out a subject and discuss it as much as i like with as many people as i like without the annoying update list and fragmented comments and misdirection from that subject. Dont get me wrong, I like Twitter and think it has much value but the day to day management of the follow/follower is taxing and frustrating. This is not an issue with Wave. You are following a conversation on a specific subject not an individual and what they might talk about at any given moment.

Public and Searching Wave

first the cautions: When starting a public wave, be wary that others may destroy it with bots and blips. You can always trash it and start over or you can sometimes remove the bots and users that are spamming your public Waves. The other problem I have had is tangly installations. I imbeded a twitter bot in a Wave and created a dummy Twitter account to post through. This was fine until i posted this Wave publicly and the set it as a page on my website. There were no security threats, but it did become unstable on my site and in my Wave account, so much that i had to trash it and cannot take it off the public timeline. It is still running but i am not following it any more. The third caution i have is, you cannot remove someone off of a Wave as of yet. This was a problem when i created public Waves and attached some of my contacts to it.When the Public Wave became unstable, i could unfollow it myself but all of the specific contacts i placed in it had to do the same for themselves. I could not just trash the whole thing with all of the contacts. The main thing to remember at this point , is this is still in development preview and i am sure that all of the wanky stuff will get worked out over the next little while. for the time being, just play around with the public and when you get a solid base of contacts start using the private Wave for your more sensitive conversations.

Here is how you access the public timeline: above your Wave Inbox there is a search/location bar that reads in:inbox replace ( in:inbox) with the words ( with:public ) do not use the parenthesis! and click on the magnifying glass. This simple comand will take you to the public timeline on all subjects. To refine your search to more specific subjects, type keywords after this enty, Example: with:public construction management or with:public twitter  you get the picture, right? if not go to my delicious and look at the links tagged Google Wave there are many posts about this very subject and others relating to Wave.

I could write about all of the features, bots, extensions, etc all day long, but there has been many post that have done a fine job of doing that already. I have several links in my Delcious that you can get all the bots and info you need for fancy Google Waving.

Thanks for reading and commenting!