The long awaited virtual world, Lively by Google has taken form… and it’s looking interesting
July 16, 2008 – 9:57 am by Kyle WelterReleased June 8th, Lively by Google is one of the more exciting virtual worlds to hit the market this year. Realizing the limiting factors that desktop programs similar to SecondLife pose, Lively has alternatively been created as a web-based program which appeals to casual users over heavy creators. The concept around the site is still that of a traditional virtual-based avatar world with customizable characters and rooms, however unlike most currency-driven virtual worlds, content is free and users have full access to product catalogs which offer clothing and furniture.
The focus around this social network is to draw in users from social networks who accept applications including Facebook, Open Social, and Myspace. Lively also places a strong focus around other Google products including photo sharing site Picasa and video sharing powerhouse Youtube. Through embedding a room into a Facebook page, the creator can invite friends into Lively and initiate real-time chat similarly to IMVU’s communication model. Lively has predicted that the majority of their users will be drawn into chat rooms from other social networks which can hold up to 20 avatars. In order to learn how to embed Lively into your website or profile, go here.
Google has kept content creation in Lively closed to developers who have proven to be trustworthy and savvy including Rivers Run Red and Millions of Us, therefore eliminating the ability for regular users to create and add content. Due to these limitations, Lively has experienced a minor backlash from people who value the ability to create and add items to the world. As Millions of Us CEO Reuben Steiger comments, “With respect to the particular flavor that they’re serving up first, I think you’re going to see a lot of blowback at first from people that don’t matter. The Second Life cognoscenti. They’ll be pissed because they can’t build stuff and blah, blah, blah. The real test is whether other people like it. If they do, that’s when it gets interesting.”
National Geographic has taken the first marketing initiative by collaborating with Millions of Us to create a custom-branded room called “LA Hard Hats.” This room encourages users to create their own custom room through using “Lively Warehouse” items and then most importantly, evangelize their creation through pasting a snippet of html code into their social network pages. These embedded rooms act as a portal in which friends can enter and interact with your space. Within this space, photos from Picasa can be placed in picture frames around the room and Youtube videos can be streaming on a television in the room.
I would not be shocked to see Lively take off in the upcoming year due to two factors. Similar to mEgo, Lively is pushing for the viral spread of rooms by attaching an embeddable html code on every screen. Lively hopes users will feel the need to evangelize and place “portals” to the virtual world within their different social networks. These portals will bring in additional users and therefore increase numbers significantly. The second factor that will play a major role in Lively by Google’s success is the sheer amount of reach that Google has on the internet. The “Google” name alone carries one of the most trusted brand values on the net, so it should definitely be beneficial to have Google riding along. The account creation process is simple and even allows you to log-in through your Google Account (See picture below).
Through playing around in the world for an extended period of time, I have noticed that the application runs quite slow and lags a decent bit. Although my computer does not have the greatest operating system, the slow running speed is a common complaint that I have noticed from users in the space and writing about it throughout the web. As a new room is entered, a status bar appears in the bottom left of the screen and reads, “Room Materializing…” which is similar to that of Habbo and other virtual worlds, yet runs particularly slow. I do not think that this occurrence will deter many users from the site as it is focused as being a recreational and casual world.
It will be very interesting to see how this currency-less world fares and even though Lively has been launched as a 20% product, I think that we will be seeing a much higher than 20% impact on casual interactions within virtual worlds.
