How did you get your family on board with you to work with wave?
What was your first impression when you came online (and probably just like me) and found no one you could interact with immediately?
My family are generally pretty geeky, and a few already got invites by applying early. I was also one of the lucky ones who was given a fair few invites (I guess by jumping on board so early?) so I used them for family as my work-mates already had applied themselves. I found that even my non-geeky family picked it up quite quickly. My technically-illiterate brother ("Will my CD work in the 'CD ROM' drive? It doesn't say ROM on my CD") managed to do all the basics, including editing posts, but of course anything beyond adding a post, replying to a post, or editing a post got a bit tricky, and replies would end up all over the place (that WAS a huge issue, getting replies to land in just the right place).
I was pretty much speechless when I found out Google wasn't doing the Gmail thing, and letting us instantly invite anyone we wanted in real-time. Having to send invites, then wait days for them to be activated, meant I spent a LOT of time talking to myself in Blips, just to play with it.
I still stand by Wave being revolutionary, just launched really badly and dropped way too soon. Google has left a lot worse projects linger around for a lot longer.
Wave needs to be a tab in Gmail, like Buzz is. It needs to be "available" to anyone who has a Google account (via invites is fine, to limit it to people who really want to use it at first, but make the invites instant). People need time to get used to it, it's the way humans are with change.