So the current buzzword among technically erudite circles is Google Wave. And the not-so-tech-savvy people are feeling left out, so they're looking for Google Wave invites, just to "be among the elite". Of course, for a first-order geek, it always gives a strange kick to be among the first adopters of any new technology. It kinda improves their "tech quotient" among social (read geeky) circles.
I tried Google Wave too. For all the hype surrounding it, it disappointed me, to say the least. Even a tech-savvy person like me took some time to understand the concept, so I wonder whether ordinary users would be able to appreciate the significance of the concept. And even if they do, the point is it doesn't give you any earth-shattering improvement over good old Gmail. In fact, unless you explicitly "play" a wave, it looks like what programmers call Spaghetti code - a highly convoluted email chain with random insertions, completely devoid of any kind of sequence. Our eyes are accustomed to reading a mail conversation sequentially, so as long as conventional mail services exist, Google Wave would stand out as sore thumb. And as I mentioned before, most users are more than satisfied with what Gmail provides, so there is no need really, for a concept that's as drastically different as this.
Today, when the aim of technology is to spread itself as far and wide as possible, the focus should be on simplicity, rather than pathbreaking concepts. In such a scenario, I feel that Google Wave is destined to suffer a disturbingly rapid demise.
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