Google Wave transforms email into instant live-edit messaging!

Email marketing will be changed forever as Google begins testing its new communication tool, Google Wave.

Due for full consumer launch early next year, Google has just begun beta-trialling with 100,000 invitees, to help test its new social editing tool, Google Wave, which will combine email, instant messaging and wiki-style live editing!

The ‘communication and collaboration tool’, developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen – the brains behind Google Maps – is also open source, allowing third party developers to build applications for it, and is, they claim “to be how e-mail would look if it were invented today”.

Taking as a starting point, the idea of ‘a conversation sitting in a cloud’, its timely arrival in the midst of the social media revolution transforms a 20 year old technology into a powerful and relevant messaging medium to spearhead dynamic 21st century online marketing campaigns.

Google Wave features ‘real-time’ typing, enabling users to follow an email as it is being written, character by character – and type in their reply even before the first email has finished! Unlike current Instant Messenger (IM) applications, conversations can continue – even when everyone has logged out! This means that those not currently online during the email exchange, can read the messages in full, at a later date.

All messages can be edited at any point by members of the conversation and a ‘Playback’ facility allows everyone to see exactly the entire, timed editing process. A draft mode which will allow the real-time aspect to be switched off, is also being developed.

Photos can also be simply dragged from the desktop and shared via the Wave platform.

Google Wave will run in most browsers, with the notable exception of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Users of IE will have to download a plug-in, known as Chrome Frame to use the application.