[gloob]

will it live up to the hype and replace a wide swath of other communications protocols

It's not like POP killed IRC, or HTTP killed SMTP. Different protocols do different things. What serious candidates would there be for Wave to kill?

[MicahWedemeyer]

Heresy! Techcrunch has taught us well that the only way for a new service/protocol/whatever to be born is by tearing its way free out the entrails of another, more mature, not-as-hot-right-now protocol.

Sorry for the imagery, I just thought it fit with the D&D theme :)

[roc]

Some different protocols do different things. But XMPP, particularly wrapped in the Wave implementation, can do many, many things.

Wave might catch on as little more than an open-source alternative to, say, Sharepoint and Biztalk. (collaboration and workflow automation being the most obvious non-communication uses).

But I don't see why people would stop short and not replace their SMTP/Jabber/IRC/RSS use with Wave once they and everyone they need to work with is using it.

[netcan]

merging Skype and mail sounds good though. If Skype put out a mail client, I'd probably use it.