6od:

It’s not working.

It took a while for me to really “understand” Google wave, but the value comes when working with several people on a project with multiple objectives. On a current project, email became very inefficient because to get at X amount of necessary information which applied to my goals and deeds for that project, I had to sort through 10X-20X total information. Since each of these bits of information came via email, I was getting 300-500 emails a day - of which 15-50 were directly applicable to me.  Only then did I understand what Google was trying to accomplish with Wave.

Many people (myself included) have said that Wave felt like a solution looking for a problem. But within the Google environment, where everyone is working on projects with many different people (and updating the group as a whole via emails on progress, problems, goals, concerns, etc.) it must have felt like a godsend to have something which helped cut through that clutter and mass of emails every day.

It’s like a wiki forum setup, where you only need to pay attention to what’s directly applicable, but all the information is there at your fingertips should you need.  Add to this the IM and direct messaging capability for when you need to chat now, and it really makes sense to me as a collaborative tool.