Google Wave Launches With 100,000 Beta Testers

Google Wave, an online, real time collaboration and communication application, is going live to approximately 100,000 beta testers today. If you have requested a beta invitation then don't expect to receive your invitation until late today according to Stephanie Hannon, co-founder of Google Wave. Stephanie tweeted at about 10:30 AM Eastern this morning that invitations would be delayed because the support staff for Google Wave is located in Sydney, Australia and they want to be awake when all of those beta testers start using Google Wave.

According to Google, a wave is equal parts conversation and document. What that means is that folks can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, videos, photos, maps and lots more.

Furthermore, a wave is shared. Any person participating can reply anywhere within the message. They can also edit the content and add participants at any point in the process too. If you as a participant come late to the party you can use a playback feature that lets you rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

Google also says that a wave is live. This means that data that you are contributing is being transmitted as you type it. People participating on the wave can have faster conversations, interact with extensions and see edits in real-time.

The application possibilities for marketing your products and services through Google Wave are not yet clear but we can reasonably assume that if Wave is a success, which is likely, then there may be some new opportunities open up for extending your reach to more prospective customers across the web with organic search engine optimization.