Lately, we have been so awash and inundated by the ubiquitous social networking and communications sites on the net and on our smartphones. The first thing I do in the morning is check my email to find out if I need to check my Facebook page, then go to Facebook, change my status update and probably send out a tweet. How often do you get the urge to update your Facebook status or that feeling that you just have to send out a tweet?

We have come to the point where there are so many tools to communicate that sometimes communication can become somewhat diluted.  There is your email (or emails), Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace, Friendster, Multiply, Hi5, and many more. Seriously, who has time to do all this? Have you ever wondered if there could be a one-stop shop to do all of this?

Well, actually there is. Enter Google Wave. The newest communications model to come out of our ever inventive and enterprising friends at Mountain View, CA. The development team actually came out of Sydney, Australia, but they’re still part of the mother ship.

So how does Google Wave work? You basically create a “wave” and add people to it. The people in your wave can use richly formatted text, videos, links, maps, photos, feeds from the net, and a variety of gadgets to use. It’s basically a mosaic of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, Google maps, Instant Messaging and Gmail. What’s really cool about this is that any participant on your wave can reply anywhere on the content and edit it as well.

For example, one of your waves is a message from your friend about your recent trip to Cuba. You can just reply right in your friend’s message without a cumbersome message editor. You can even put photos of your trip to Cuba and it will be attached to the wave. And if you went with a friend who was not originally part of that wave and you want to include them, simply drag their photo into the wave and they instantly become a part of it. So your wave becomes this sort of live organism that you and your “wave buddies” (if that’s the term) create and modify. You can also rewind the wave to see how the wave evolved over time. You can instant message people, do event invites, give directions using Google Maps, and many more!

Here is a snapshot of Google Wave:

I’m pretty excited about this and if you are as excited as I am, check out the Official Google Wave Blog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/went-walkabout-brought-back-google-wave.html. It might just leave Twitter and Facebook shaking in their boots.

by Paula Purpera