Google gets "Lively"
It was only a matter of time.
Google, the internet darling and search engine giant has created its own virtual world.
Launched yesterday, Lively is reported to be Google's take on virtual worlds, in particular, Second Life.
Like most things Google, Lively is just a little bit different.
One of the key differences between Lively and Second Life is that unlike Second Life, Lively is directly integrated with the Internet. Niniane Wang, Google's engineering manager for the project states, "It's integrated with the Internet. It's not an alternate destination. Our intention is to add to your existing life."
Niniane Wang is not even a marketing type, but I like what she says. Integrated. Adding to your existing life.
One might wonder exactly how you can integrate a virtual world with your (existing) real life. Google's interpretation of this integration takes several forms:
- You can pipe in content hosted elsewhere on the Internet, including photos and videos.
- You can embed your Lively environment/life (whatever you want to call it) into your blog, Facebook (now) or MySpace (coming soon).
Touted on the Lively web site, "Create an avatar and chat with your friends in rooms you design." To my ears, Lively has a certain ring for teenagers. The Lively Getting Started Guide proclaims:
"You're about to embark on a chat experience in which you can communicate and express yourself using avatars in your very own space. Choose an avatar and use it to make friends and chat. Create rooms, decorate them to your liking, and make sure to invite your friends over."
Having friends over to chat in your room. It sounds so thirteen to eighteen years old to me.
It's probably not a coincidence that Google spent several months testing Lively among a group of students at Arizona State University before opening the service to the public through its "Labs" section for experimental products.
With close to 83% of the Second Life user population 25 years old and older, it appears that Google is targeting the younger set.
I've often wondered if Second Life has some sort of appeal for middle aged folks looking for a new life. It hasn't gone unnoticed to me that most twenty-somethings that I know want nothing to do with Second Life. My own private theory: at twenty-something you're trying to build a real life. By the time you hit middle age, the age of many Second Life users, many haven't achieved their desired perfection, hence the appeal of creating the perfect life in a fantasy world.
Now that that politically incorrect assertion is out there, here are some questions for my readers:
- Will the average age of Lively users be younger than the average age of Second Life users?
- If Lively appeals more to younger people, will it be Google's integration into a person's existing life that appeals more to younger people, or will it be the Google mystique?
- Will people like myself, who happen to be fans of real life, see the integrated Lively as a way to enrich real life?
- Are integrated virtual worlds the wave of the future?
I don't know the answers to these questions, but I'm thinking about them.
Unlike Second Life, Lively doesn't cost anything, nor does it require a huge software download. Lively operates in a browser, and only requires a small browser plug-in. Unfortunately, for me, Lively only runs on Windows Vista/XP with Internet Explorer or Firefox. I've heard that getting Lively to work on a Mac OS X client is a high priority. Until then, I probably won't get to play with it.
So, until I "get Lively," so to speak, I'll just continue with my fragmented and un-integrated second and real lives. As it happens, I find my real life fairly lively. Though I'm not a twenty-something, that suits me just fine.
