So I have my Google Wave Beta invite and have been using it a bit with about 15 friends. Unfortunately, I haven’t had any invites myself to give out, so for now I’m the only one at the office riding.

So what is Wave? Google says it’s what email would have been if it were invented today. A communications platform not built to emulate a familiar, existing platform like email was. No inbox, to, from, CCs, or BCCs – holdovers from an older form of communication that carried over into the digital realm. It’s part document, part conversation, oh and in real time.

Did I freak your bean? Well to be honest it did for me at first, but after using it for the last two weeks or so somewhat regularly, I’m not so sure it’s as revolutionary as Google is hoping it to be.

By now most of are pretty familiar with Google Docs - shareable documents and spreadsheets that allow multiple people to collaborate and edit all together at once. You can’t overwrite people’s files (there are no file versions) and you can roll back to an earlier time in the document’s history. Pretty neat, and pretty handy. We use it all the time here when we go through our extensive QC process to ensure a bug-free and outstanding completed project for delivery. Designers, Account Executives, Developers, and Project Managers, review the project and note any remaining bugs, design and positioning tweaks, copy edits, etc. In the past we had done this all in a spreadsheet and everyone had read only copies while one person at a time would add to the document. We would make phone calls to each other for clarification on items and other questions.

Now we do it all in one document, at the same time. We color code comments so we know who wrote it and cross of the items in real-time as they’re rectified. It’s improved our workflow greatly.

Google Wave lets you share files write into a “wave” with everyone apart of it. You can edit what anyone’s written to append information or make corrections, or add commentary – in real time. In most cases you can see people typing as they type. Much like Facebook, or iGoogle gadgets, developers can build their own apps to be used within waves. You can embed games, bots that can potentially crawl the wave and pull in relevant information to the conversation, Google maps, conduct polls etc.

Recently, Google announced that individuals will be able to host their own Waves. A company can run it on their own secure networks without relying on Google to be generous and host it on the cloud. This also should remove most security and privacy concerns giving business owners full control over their Waves. Unlike Gmail which parses your email to serve relevant ads, I have yet to see any ads popping in anywhere. I’m not entirely sure how feasible it would be to embed ads without it being entirely too distracting and overwhelming.

What’s not to like? Sounds pretty awesome doesn’t it. Well, I have my gripes and I’m hoping some things are cleared up as development continues (this is very much so still in Beta, I mean more beta than what Google normally considers beta, how was Gmail in beta and in widespread use? Few years?). I’ll detail this a bit in a future post.

If you can’t wait to learn all about Wave from me, you can watch Google’s 80 minute (yes 80 minutes) unveiling presentation from last March here.

Be on the look out for my future posts on Google Wave!