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PREPARING FOR THE SOCIAL TSUNAMIGoogle wave is about to landHOW GOOGLE WAVE WILL HIT MARKETERSGoogle has changed the world more than once. The company built the world’s bestsearch engine, became the world’s biggest advertising media supplier and is nowone of the world’s largest companies – not to mention being the strongest brand inthe world, exceeding USD 100 billion in value***. Tempting to rest on your laurelsand rely on your cash cows, one might think, but Google know how fast change takesplace in the online world. So the company is set to release a product that willchange the world again – and its impact may be far more dramatic than anythingGoogle has done to date.If you haven’t heard of Google Wave don’t panic. It’s not yet publicly released.At this stage it is still in the hands of developers and other members of the geekelite. But the conference that Google held at the end of May, and the subsequentYouTube video released, is creating buzz world-wide. Just how Google Wave willimpact marketers in the coming months and why, is what this article is all about.A BIT OF BACKGROUNDGoogle has always had a policy of ‘giving away’ some of their most innovativeproducts. Google Maps, Gmail, The Android operating system and Google docs haveall been open source and freely available to the public. While this tactic leavesmany people scratching their heads is not purely altruistic. It is calculated onthe basis that these ‘free’ developments increase internet usage and ultimatelyhelps Google sell their main product. That product is Adwords, Google’s uniquemethod for selling online advertising, generating a constant series of ‘mini-auctions’ every time a search is performed to analyse which advertisers haveearned the right to ‘sponsored links’ on every results page.This concept is an important part of what Google’s famous ‘auction economics’equation, that has allowed he business to become a media giant.WAVE DEFINED – BRIEFLYThere has been a lot of hype around Google Wave already – and with good reason. Inthis latest project Google has set out to completely reinvent email, instantmessaging and social networking in one move. This seems like an audacious move –until you see the presentation video. In it the project lead says that email,which is really just a digital form of posted mail, was invented before the worldwide web – even before the internet as we understand it existed. Google assertsthat email is fundamentally flawed, something that anyone who has emailed multiplerecipients and then tried to follow the responses can attest to. On the other handsocial networks that are designed around conversation ‘threads’ do not hold thepower that email has in terms of exchanging documents and engaging in longerconversations.This is where Wave comes in. It will enable multi-person conversations in realtime – the people you are conversing with can even see what you type character bycharacter, if you so desire. And if you arrive to the conversation late you canrewind and watch it unfold all over again. It will give you the ability to sharemaps, video images and documents with a simple, drag-and drop interface. Otherusers can even go and edit what you have written rather than copy everything andrespond one item at a time.Each of these conversations Google calls a ‘wave’. These waves can happen publicly
 
or in multi-lateral fashion, or with just two people – bi-laterally. And each wavecan be embedded on a blog or website (I’m betting this Wave will evolve into asite content management system before it’s even released), with spell-check andeven instant translation as you go. That’s right – one of the plug-ins alreadydeveloped draws on available internet data to translate conversations from onelanguage to another, with correct sentence structure, as you type. I’ll discussthe implications of that later.There is much more to Wave, and now that some developers have got their hands onit there will be much, much more by the time it launches. Needless to say this hasthe potential to create massive workplace and communication efficiencies (andprobably also distractions as a side effect), get people communicating who havenever been able to communicate before and generally change the way we interact inthe digital space.TAKE IT. IT’S YOURS.The next big surprise about Wave is that it is entirely Open Source based. We arenot talking ‘kind of’ Open Source where only the geekiest of programmers get tofiddle with it. We are talking ‘completely’ Open Source. If you are afraid ofGoogle knowing what you are doing then download it, install it on your ownservers, customise it and use it in anyway you want. This could easily spell theend of company intranets as they currently exist. When Google said they wanted tochange the way we communicate, they meant it.This means that, as a platform, it has a massive potential. Google have reallyjust made an unbelievably innovative breakthrough. The real magic will happen whenthe rest of the world gets their hands on it and starts developing new ways ofusing it.GET TO THE POINT. WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR ME?2009 has been a year of change for the marketing managers of the world. Newspapersin their current form are fading away, TV delivery is changing (if you don’t knowabout Hulu and how Google is planning on monetising YouTube yet – it’s time tofind out. Personalised direct marketing is coming to a screen near you) and socialnetworks have taken off as a marketing mechanism.If you have not kept up with, and truly understood the implications of socialnetworking, now is the time to knuckle down and learn the new rules. Wave willeither massively boost the popularity of social networks, or it will swallow themup. Either way the two-way conversations that are the hallmark of web 2.0 are hereto stay and they are only going to get more widespread. Human civilisation isbased on social interaction and it cannot be contained.Don’t be fooled if you think that this technological jump won’t catch on; that’swhat some commentators said about email, instant messaging and social networks.They all seem to be doing just fine.THIS IS A GOOD THING – REALLYAs marketers we are going to have to deal with this change – quickly. Theeffectiveness of mass media advertising is declining – fast. Direct and completelymeasurable marketing will be the way the world works. Every touch-point will bedata rich.Brands will have to define themselves differently because niche interests willrise to the surface very quickly. This will be customisation as on a scale never
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