Wave is a multi-user, wiki-collaboration platform which hopes to make email obsolete, among other things. Wave is seen as a game changer and its popularity alone makes it a platform you will want to have a presence on.

In working to build your presence, let’s start with the basics on navigation and utilizing Wave. After all, you can’t build a presence if you are in the dark about how to navigate and use the darn thing.

Let’s set up your Wave experience.

Editing Your Profile:

Every time you make a wave, comment a wave or add to a wave, your avatar gets added to both the top of the wave and in each comment you make/edit. Anyone that knows about branding knows that your avatar is a visual signature. It is a good idea to pick the avatar you want people to associate with you and what you are on Wave to accomplish.

To edit your Profile information, look to the bottom left-hand of your screen at the ‘Contacts’ panel and click on your name at the top of the panel. A small wave-like blip should open up with an option in the lower right hand of the bubble for ‘Edit Profile’. Click on this link. This link will take you away from Wave in a new screen. Edit your information as you would like others to see it, including your avatar photo. (On occasion, the avatar has not shown up, you may have to do this several times. This is a beta platform, have patience and understand that Google is working hard to fix errors.)

Search for Friends and Add Contacts:

Now that you have had a look at the ‘Contacts’ panel, let’s get familiar with it. At the bottom right hand of the ‘Contacts’ panel, there is a little ‘ + ’ button. Go ahead and click on that. By entering an email address, ending with @googlewave.com you can see which friends you have in Wave already. You can add them as you find them.

Next to the ‘+’ button that we clicked on to get to our ‘Add Contact’ feature, there is a ‘Manage Contacts’ link. Click on this if you would like to see a list of your contacts. This will open a new screen. In the future, there are hopes that ‘Groups’ made in the ‘Manage Contacts’ panels will transfer into Wave, but at this time they do not have that implemented.

Linking Twitter to your Wave:

Twitter is everywhere anymore. If you are an author looking to increase readership through social networking, I assume you have a twitter. If not, I would direct you to this awesome article on why it is important to have a twitter account and how to best utilize the platform, professionally.

You have twitter? Okay, this is for you. Go to your contacts panel. Remember the ‘+’ ‘Add Contacts’ we went to? You are going to add this contact to your list: tweety-wave@appspot.com and look for the Tweety contact to show up.

Once you have Tweety in your contacts, go ahead and click on the blue avatar in your contacts panel and select ‘New Wave’ from the options the new bubble gives you. Within a matter of a few seconds, the new wave should be created with only you and Tweety the Twit-bot in the wave. Be sure not to add anyone else, or any other bots except Bouncy. (We will cover Bouncy momentarily). Tweety should give you a pop-up window and ask you to fill in your information. Go ahead and do this. It should load your twitter updates in a few minutes.

At the top of the wave, you will see the ‘What are you doing’ and you can just post till your little heart’s content! A word of caution, it does not yet have a 140 character counter implemented. You will have to use your best judgment as to how long the post would be. The post will post to your twitter account with the words ‘from Wave’ underneath but is a little slow in type-to-post time, but not unbearably so.

What about Bouncy?

Anyone using Wave, in my opinion, should add Bouncy to their contacts. Bouncy is an application-bot that will kick bots out of a wave if they begin to wreak havoc or just slow the wave down too much. At this time, Bouncy does not eliminate ‘Public’ or human participants.

To add bouncy, click your ‘+’ button at the bottom of the contacts panel and add: bouncy-wave@appspot.com

When you want to ‘bounce’ a bot, you simply select the participant at the top of the wave and you will have an option to ‘Bounce’ but only if Bouncy is in the wave. It is a good idea to add Bouncy to all your public waves. It only takes one nasty-irritating bot to ruin a wave experience. This should save you a lot of headaches in recreating a wave and worrying about another bot getting added. One of the best safeguards Google Wave team has added, by far.

Look for the next post on Wave use for authors as we begin to expand out of the fundamentals and into the meat and potatoes of a Wave presence for authors and writers everywhere.