By Michael Gross, vice president with Anne Klein Communications Group & Philly PRSA’s president-elect

We are all talking about Twitter, Facebook, and Web 3.0 right now.  So … instead of pointing out some cool features, like TweetDeck’s ability to monitor for key terms or Facebook’s new metrics for fan pages, let’s talk about a new tool that can’t possibly be out of date yet - it hasn’t launched!  I’m talking about Google’s latest work, Google Wave, and it looks amazing.

Right now the new tool is still in the hands of “tech” people, as developers fully flesh out its capabilities.  In addition, Google is offering the software as “open source,” allowing other developers to design extensions that integrate with Wave.

In a nutshell, Google Wave is an application that, among other things, will provide a one-stop shop (and logon) to access all your social media tools. For example, instead of going to your blog’s site, logging in, and adding a new post; and then going to Facebook, Twitter, and other places to promote the addition, Google Wave handles it all for you.  Its various widget add-ons take much of the legwork out of engaging social media.

In addition to providing access to social media tools, the application will offer an alternative to traditional e-mail.  Each new message, or “wave,” will act as a message thread similar to ones found on message boards or forums.  Each wave will be a conversation that can be shared with others, and offers more flexibility than e-mail.  No more e-mail trails that require hours to dissect.  Photos and videos will be embedded and added in real time, and all of this can be seamlessly mingled with Twitter, Facebook, and other social media tools such as wikis.

Also, you should keep an eye on Google Wave’s plans to revolutionize collaborative, online editing. The application will allow a group to work in a document (from anywhere in the world) simultaneously-you will see edits happen in real time and Wave will even translate languages as you type.  There is a “playback” feature that details the document’s history, so we can forget about having to try to decipher the evolution of a “track-changes” riddled Word document.

A text description like this doesn’t do this new application justice; I’ve just scratched the surface.  To get a better understanding of what to expect from Wave, check out the developer preview video at http://wave.google.com.

Who knows at this point if Google Wave will actually revolutionize online communications, but as of now, it has a lot of promise.  And, hey, it’s Google!