Google Wave and Exclusive CollaborationGoogle Wave and Exclusive Collaboration

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to make Wave invitation-only.

One final note as we put Google Wave to bed once and for all, and it's something that, when you look back on it you can't believe no one seemed to notice at the time.

Joe Schueller, a Cisco bloggerJoe Schueller, a Cisco blogger, points out that, while opening Google Wave by invitation only was a great way to build buzz and make people feel like part of the "in crowd" when they got an invite, this is a really poor approach to rolling out a collaboration tool. Collaboration tools are all about network effects--the most valuable ones aren't necessarily the ones with the coolest functionality out there. The most valuable collaboration tools, in the public realm, are the tools that the most people are using.

Several commenters on Schueller's blog post make the same point. They're not just raising academic objections; they're saying that they tried to use Wave, but weren't able to connect with all the people with whom they actually collaborate.

This is less of a concern within an enterprise if you deliberately standardize on a specific vendor's tool, like Microsoft or IBM (or Cisco, to give Joe props). Apropos of this point, I want to close by going back to one of the charts from Information Week's UC end user survey, which asked about the biggest barrier to UC adoption. The survey found that a not-insignificant number, 20%, ranked among their top 3 barriers to UC adoption the fact that, "Users have adopted consumer workarounds, such as Skype or AIM, and are resisting the switch to officially supported UC systems":