Sell Your Second Life Stock…
By Jeff Hilimire on Monday, July 14th, 2008Google finally has an answer to Second Life. Their virtual world, called Lively, is a browser based world that you can bet will integrate all the Googley things we love (search, gmail, documents, etc.).
There are three reasons I always thought Second Life was going to fail. First, the search functionality in Second Life is about as bad as it could be. No doubt Google will fix that problem. Another problem with Second Life is that it isn’t browser based which I think severely limits the amount of people that will be willing to try it. And in the end, Second Life has a pretty steep learning curve. You spend the first few hours trying to learn how to fly and navigate, all the while being propositioned by naked avatars to do things you aren’t even sure are possible. The great thing about Google is that they consistently produce products that are intuitive to the user.
Unfortunately Lively isn’t available for Mac yet so I can’t play with it, so if anyone out there is able to test it and try it out, I’d love to know how it compares to Second Life.
Also, if you’re still one of those people that think there is no future in virtual worlds, you might want to rethink that, as over $345 million has been invested in virtual worlds already this year … in a tight economy.
Lively may not be Second Life, but it still has some of the same issues (adult activities). Though, it does sound like Lively is doing something about it. “Google Lively’s community standards prohibit nudity and sexually explicit material: “We don’t allow nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material.”
Check out this CNET article (Google fends off pornographic Lively rooms): http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9990371-93.html?hhTest=1&part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
While Lively has it’s beta kinks to work out, I can definitely see it outgrowing Second Life. Lively combines social features with the technology of the internet. In lively you are able to listen to online radio, attach pictures in virtual picture frames, and watch YouTube on virtual televisions (which is where most of the ‘adult’ content comes from).
Lively’s islands have more of a 3D look to them and are more appealing than the look of Second Life’s locations. Lively’s islands will also soon be connected into one cohesive virtual world easily traveled through without searching or teleporting.
The main problem people are experiencing with Lively are very slow load times. A problem which Google will certainly correct quickly.
When Google addresses and fixes the few kinks, Lively will be on its way to becoming the biggest and best virtual world we have seen yet.