Yes, a picture really is worth a thousand words.  After a few weeks of poking at Google Wave & thinking the concept is cool, but the reality seems to have no juice, I saw Dave Michels post a link to this picture on Twitter and it said everything I had been thinking.

It was gratifying to see I wasn’t alone, though plenty of tweets from others reflected this impression too.  Maybe the hype and promise of email 3.0 was too great a promise for us to not lose a little real perspective on what it would deliver.

Google Wave is still in a beta mode with most of the world still not aware of what it is.  Since you have to be invited to use it, maybe when the kinks are addressed it can be modified and improved before it’s rolled out to the general public.

For now, it’s a great professional collaboration tool with some very interesting features that may or may not be useful enough for us to leave traditional email for personal use. It’s in private beta because it’s a great tool for people collaborating on developing widgets and plug ins.  I have faith that it will evolve into a useful consumer product too.

You can look at my post on Pulp Fiction Explains Google Wave if you haven’t had a chance to play with it.  …and don’t worry, so far you’re only missing out on wondering what the big deal about it is.

I just got my Google Wave invitation yesterday.  I probably won’t have time to play with it to understand it until this weekend.  But after watching this video, it’s easy to see how the social web and social email will be transforming how we share and receive content.

The language is not safe for work, but the demo will show you a new way of using the internet.  Besides, it’s the best scene in Pulp Fiction and hearing Samuel L. Jackson’s soliloquy is always a treat.

Click here to view the embedded video.