The Rotten Word

Image by curiouslee via Flickr

I recently posted at Examiner.com about the burgeoning Philly Google Wave community. I have added an update about finding the Philly Wave from your own Wave account. Click through to read the article.

Google’s new Wave platform is poised to revolutionize how people communicate and collaborate on the internet. Marketing itself as a fusion of email, chat, and document collaboration, the new service is rolling invites out as part of its limited beta release. This means that, slowly but surely, more and more people are gaining access to Wave.

Inevitably, some of those people are Philadelphians. In fact, over 50 Philadelphians (and counting) have already joined a group called “Philly and Local Burbs Group Wave.”

UPDATE: If you have received your invitation and created a Wave account, you can find this local Philly wave by pasting the following in the search box inside the Wave page: “from:godrockdj@googlewave.com.” See the screenshot below, which shows the result. “godrockdj” is the username of the creator of the Wave, and the search simply returns all public waves godrockdj has created thus far (as of publication, only this one). Pretty cool, huh?

For now, the conversation seems to be about where each user is from and just a “introductions” feel. But talk has already begun about the possibility of a meet-up for Philadelphia users of Google Wave. This is important for a few reasons.

First, it’s interesting that Google’s newest communication paradigm is already spurring thought in the minds of local users that they should meet one another in the real world. This is wholly different from the more static, one-to-one connections made by email and instant messaging. Already this new, more fluid and engaging multi-user communication platform is affecting the real world. People who would otherwise have never met, despite being separated by only a few miles, are discussing the possibility of an organized gathering. Google Wave is already bringing Philadelphians together.

And Philly is not alone. Philadelphia joins a large number of cities whose residents are coalescing around Google Wave and the idea that communication in the real world and communication on the internet are converging. If you use Google Wave, or know someone in the area who does, encourage them to find this group and get to know other early-adopters in the Philadelphia region.