What is the Wave?
Wave is a new collaboration technology from Google. It’s just been made available in a pre-beta version to about 300,000 to 600,000 people globally. (100,000 invitees who in turn can give access to 5  additional people each).

It’s a Swiss Army Knife of a tool for collaborating and communicating in real time. It has the potential to change the way we communicate, and I forsee many virtual teams using it to improve productivity, when it’s made generally available in the months ahead. Like Google Apps, the price for admission is free, so the barriers to entry will be very low.

The best description I’ve seen for what the Wave is and how businesses might use it is by Daniel Tenner, in his post “What problems does Google Wave solve?  (read the comments too, for a lively and mostly intelligent discussion of pros and cons of Wave).

Essentially Tenner postures that Wave is not a geek/hacker tool or a social media tool, but a corporate tool that solves real world work problems.

When Should You Jump In?
Business owners, executives, project teams and the rest of us with high collaboration requirements should have an awareness of the Wave – and in my opinion that’s good enough for now.

This “preview” version is pre-beta, with all the rough edges and incomplete functionality that that implies. I’d leave this pie in the oven for now while the early adopters do the heavy work in the kitchen.

In the meanwhile, get your mind around what it is and it’s potential for revolutionizing business communications and marketing. Then when the time’s ready to jump in that Wave, you’ll be both ready and stoked.