14 DAY TRIAL // Google is ready to expand its testing of the upcoming communications platform Google Wave to include 100,000 lucky new users. The move was first revealed a couple of months ago and now Wave's creators have more details on the wider release and on the product itself. There are several ways of getting your hands on the new product but at this point there's not much you can do to increase your chances.
There are four groups that will get access in this 'wave' of invitations and some users will be favored over others. First in line to get new accounts are all of the developers who already have access to the Google Wave sandbox and which have been testing and developing applications for it over the summer. While access was limited at first, new users have been added over the past four months so there may be as much as 30,000 developers already working on Wave.
The next to have access will be select Google Apps customers that have signed up for the test. These will include companies that have expressed interest in the new communications technology but also several schools, supposedly around Sydney, the Wave team's headquarters, so the developers can go out to the schools to see it being used in a normal setting and to answer any questions the students or the faculty may have.
Finally, users who have signed up to get access to Google Wave using the page set up for the process with priority given to those who made their request early on. This means that if you signed up in the last weeks or are signing up just now you likely won't get an invitation this time around but Wave will expand even further in the future so there's hope yet.
Interestingly though, Google also revealed that some of the users who get accepted will also get eight invitations to hand out to their friends. This changes the game completely but it also makes sense. A communications tool isn't of much use without friends to talk to, so Google wants to make sure that the new users will get to actually test Wave. So if you play your cards right you may get a brand-new account yet.