Comment by trezor

It was (eventually) supposed to replace email

While it may have been able to do this if handled correctly, nobody was going to check waves recently when invites where superexclusive and you could only communicate with random strangers you found on the ars-wave, which you also found entirely by random trying to see if it could be used for anything.

Really. It was solid technology and very neat engineering, but there was no social incentive to use it.