Since I got Google Wave yesterday, I've been encouraged by a few people to write a quick assessment of the messaging service its inventors see as 'the future of email'. With its focus on real-time communication and collaboration, there's just one problem; there's noone I know on it to communicate with.

At the moment, users are early adopters - the majority of whom will have either registered interest on the Wave invite site or begged their friends to let them in. As such the majority of Wave action right now is people talking about Wave itself. Self-reflexivity is no new problem for social media, and far be it from me to criticise a blossoming online communication medium, it's just that now the friend who invited me has gone on holiday, I'm down to one contact. I could start a public wave with people I don't know but... what would I collaborate with them on? and would I want to?

At first glance, the thinking behind Wave's limited release is great; to generate a buzz built around exclusivity excites, frustrates and, eventually, increases the likelihood of widespread uptake when the floodgates open. Everyone's favourite music streaming Spotify was released invite-only initially, to a highly limited group of users who evangelised sufficiently well for it to become ubiquitous amongst young music-lovers (at least those in the countries it's rolled out in). But the success of that campaign was built on the fact that as an experience, using Spotify can be almost as fulfilling individually as when you're sharing playlists with friends. Wave, on the other hand, is fundamentally social, and for that it suffers from this kind of promotion.

(Image via Twitter)