Lists and Waves

The fact that Twitter,  Twitter Lists and Google Wave exist warms my heart.  They are tools that generate their own innovation buzz eco-system and drive what this blog is all about: Future Business.  Foundational tools like these, along with open source projects, are the essence of the web2.0 innovation renaissance.  Think about how fast tools and processes can iterate today to match widescale and niche user needs compared to where we were 10 years ago.

At the moment it is the wild west ...

for these innovation eco-systems.  Everyone thinks they have a good idea and they are running full-speed either with a little bit of money or completely bootstrapped.  Over time, we will start to settle on some valuable use cases and the real money will head in that direction.

As an innovator interested in new ways that business can operate, both tools’ potential fascinates me.  While Twitter lists is pretty much what I expected it would be, Wave did not live up to my initial expectations.  I’ll give both a fair shake over a period of time because, like Twitter itself, there is likely a path of use evolution.  The truly valuable use cases might not show themselves until 3rd party apps have been written that run on top.

For Twitter Lists I am starting to see

Lists that you are in can be a crowd-sourced social descriptor of what you tweet about

Curating a popular list gives you credibility as a networker in the space that list covers

For Wave I think we are going to need tools and agreed conventions which

Help us collectively “garden” (manage) waves.  Waves have structure and are objects intended to grow over time.  Because they become more complex over time, they need constant management in order that they are accessible to newcomers and previous visitors/contributors alike.

Help us find portions of waves that are relevant to our needs and re-use those elements in our own content spaces: other waves, blogs, etc…

Long live the companies that are thinking about how to start the next innovation eco-system.

Tagged: Google, Google Wave, innovation, tools, twitter, Twitter Lists, Wave, web2.0

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