Don't be a pain in the Wave

I've been looking at Google Wave as a PR tool. Wave was introduced last year as a way to streamline communications into a single "wave" - it streams email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management into one platform.

What can you do on a wave? Your friends or colleagues can hold discussions, share files, chat, or comment on any of your post on any forum.

For PR pros, Wave changes the game. Anybody can contribute to the story with links, wikis, pictures, etc. BuzzMachine summarized it nicely here: "It combines the notions of a process as people add and subtract and update; it has the benefit of a wiki – a snapshot of current knowledge; it can be live; it can feed a blog page with the latest; it can feed Twitter with updates; it is itself the collaborative tool that lets participants question each other."

What I like is that Wave may return PR agents to communication agents versus just emailers of information. They can employ creative and engaging communication with anyone who joins the wave to get the word out about company news.

So leave it to PR people to already start getting a bad rap with a new technology tool. In my research, I found Jennifer Leggio's post highlighting some low-lights of how PR people have been violating the rules of engagement via social media:

1. Adding a journalist / blogger on Facebook and entering into a trusted network only to blatantly pitch said journalist / blogger on his or her “wall”
2. Spam @ messaging a journalist / blogger on Twitter multiple times to get them to review / write about your news or technology
3. Commenting on unrelated FriendFeed posts to try and get the writer’s attention

In a related post, Jason Perlow noted an early violation of Wave "PR Protocol" (if there's not such a thing, there soon will be). A pomegranate juice company I'd never heard of added him to their Wave -- you're not opted in, you're forced in.

Jason said: "As if using and trying to get used to Google Wave was bad enough, the PR agencies and marketing firms of the world have decided to start taking advantage of us, because we’re a captive audience and if they’ve ever contacted us in the past via e-mail on GMail, they now have a full contact database of people to torture by Google Wave if they were able to get an invite onto the system."

PR friends, Google Wave has a lot of potential for us, but let's respect the space of those influencers we want to connect with. Let's not be a pain in the wave and enlarge the credibility chasm our industry has with many in the media.