Slack is what Google Wave should have been. There are a number of reasons why it wasn't appreciated and eventually shut down. They launched with such huge fanfare, almost too much - so it launched with very high expectations that it ultimately didn't fulfill. No one really knew what to use it for (even within Google), so they didn't clearly define their target customer or use case. At the time (2010), messaging apps hadn't really taken off, especially when applied to a business context. It just ended up being a cool technology with no clear customer. So I think it is a combination of it being ahead of its time and not having a clear customer target.
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Respectfully, I'd disagree with this and the suggestion a product "wasn't appreciated."
Products are inherently simple and usable, iterating to new features when the previous single feature reaches a tipping point of adoption.
Google Wave was the classic example (as Google+ did) of not having a sequence of narratives to their features and of not understanding the fundamentals of online messaging tools. It's always "low(er) user effort level, (drive) high signal volume, (drive) high frequency of that volume and then reduce noise," (AOL IM, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Slack as examples).
Google appears to attempt to solve messaging in an elegant engineering way--with a process of what is the optimal perhaps or where we are going but not iterating to get there. A classic case of attempting to achieve "E" while starting from "A" but not iterating through "B, C, D"
Both Google Wave & Google+ splashed too many features and confusion on the user from the outset--"how does this work with Buzz," "how do I set up these circles/what are these circles for."
Maybe we're saying the same thing, but respectfully, I find it inherently antithetical.
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