As I was still thinking about deconstruction, breaking down media businesses into individual components, and directing these towards the source of highest economic value, somebody brought up Google Wave to me and this gave my rambling thoughts a further push. From the little bit I know about Google Wave, this is a platform that seems to me to take the web’s “top hits” and combine these into a “best of” release. Because it is branded Google, and as it ties into all of Google’s features and gizmos, this service will have some traction, no doubt. But by the same token, because it is branded Google, and because it ties into all of Google’s features and gizmos, anything short of mass popularity will be a failure of sorts.
With respect to my deconstruction musings, the fate of Google Wave will be fascinating to follow. Although only a single product, it has such drive for conglomeration, such spirit for convergence! This personal communication service would take email, short-form text messaging, instant messaging, multi-media publishing, group communication, and some other varieties of bells and whistles that can only satisfy every interactive whim, and combine these into an open source platform to which developers can add more bells and whistles still. Is this going too far? The market will as always react, and therein will be our answer; but it seems to me that Google Wave runs the risk of overwhelming its audience with complexity and abundance.
Perhaps I underestimate the people’s passion for more, and perhaps we are harder and harder to overwhelm. But let’s look at evidence to-date. Twitter with its pure and simple 140-character text outlet, no pictures, no audio, no video, at best an abbreviated link, continues to grow like wildfire. For the time being at least, there is a market statement also in Twitter’s success.
Until proven otherwise by Google Wave, it may be surmised that people enjoy their services compartmentalized, and simple. We have our email clients for email, we have our Twitter for micro-blogs, we have our various IM services for instant messaging, and even our Facebook doesn’t really cater to our career networking needs, for which we prefer Linked In. Perhaps there is something to be said for simplicity and single purpose. And possibly, as well, consumers are at a point where, bombarded by communication and interaction every which way, they take comfort in the separation of such services and the ability to turn each on or off, individually and at will.
Which isn’t to say that Google Wave will seek to displace all of the mentioned platforms (or will it?), but there may be something off-putting about a catch-all service from which you can’t escape. And there may be too much gadgetry and gizmo abundance, as previously stated, for an audience that may already be overwhelmed by features and alternatives. One way or the other, the market will speak soon enough; but either way, there will be a statement in the response that, on a certain level, will shed light on the opportunity for combination or deconstruction in media, and the limits thereof.
