I always thought that Google Wave had real, unrealized potential as a social networking platform.
Everyone -- Google included -- got really caught up in the tech demo UI when what was really interesting was the stuff going on under the hood.
Wave was based on XMPP, designed to be federated, was designed to be able to handle arbitrary data types, was extensible via robots, had built-in privacy controls, etc.
If you sat down and tried to figure out all the things a distributed social network should do, Wave really had all the right building blocks in place. Instead Google marketed it as next-generation email and it flopped.
Everyone -- Google included -- got really caught up in the tech demo UI when what was really interesting was the stuff going on under the hood.
Wave was based on XMPP, designed to be federated, was designed to be able to handle arbitrary data types, was extensible via robots, had built-in privacy controls, etc.
If you sat down and tried to figure out all the things a distributed social network should do, Wave really had all the right building blocks in place. Instead Google marketed it as next-generation email and it flopped.