I was one of the first people I knew that used GMail.  I was such an early adopter, that many of my friends thought that Gmail stood for “George Mail.”  Still, I was instantly in love – the threaded conversations, the clean interface, the unlimited space – it was everything that any one could ever want from an email provider.

Flash forward all these years to Google Wave.  I wanted Google Wave early and, lo and behold, I have it.  The problem: No one else does.  Sure, I have a handful of friends that use it but it ultimately is proving to be useless without mass adoption.  The friends that I do share the luxury of having an account aren’t the friends that I’m collaborating with.  I understand Google’s desire to slowly increase the amount of people using it but, since it’s a collaboration tool, it really is useless until a large number of your friends – or at least a large number of people that you do collaborative work with – actually use it.

I’m excited at the possibility of Wave and think it could really be an amazing addition to projects that I have with friends/colleagues/business partners around the world.  But, right now, I feel stupid having it – staring at the blank canvas of waves feeling quite alone in the world.  It’s hard to enjoy using a collaboration tool when no one you collaborate with uses it….