Goodbye Lively...

Google Lively posted this today http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/lively-no-more.html

I have to say, despite my issues with what they chose to do and how they managed telling their user community about it, that I think it's a pity Google have chosen to close lively.

Whilst it wasn't the revolution that we were all hoping for, in my opinion it did have it's niche.

What I would hope is that this isn't the end of Google's interest in virtual worlds. We need another big player to step in here and create some diversity with a decent budget behind it, and no, in my opinion that doesn't mean we need another mirror world. What we need is something that can realistically compete with Second Life. Something that can encompass user created content (from within the VW engine), with rights management and a workable economy, and better media and web content integration.

In my opinion there are only a few companies capable of doing this. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and the larger games companies.

Google: please don't let one failed project keep you out of this sector for long, and if you want some advice on how to position your next offering ...

Google ... where did all the innovation go?

Google has been hard at work in it's application developments recently. We had Google Health, then Lively and now Chrome. Google Earth was innovation, as was Google Health. My concern is that Lively, and now Chrome are Google essentially reiterating existing applications, with no obvious sign of the innovation or insight that I'd expect them to display.

Both Lively and Chrome add new applications into already heavily populated application genres. From a marketing perspective I'm struggling to see the real UPS, from a perspective of differentiation, producing applications into competitive genres - Virtual Worlds and Browsers both seeing a lot of growth over the last couple of years - effectively dilutes Google's presence, unless they can launch what becomes the leader in both of these genres. And that is no mean feat.

This is the thing that seems to be lacking from Google at the moment (and the thing that would make some sense of this sporadic application development) is a public statement of Google's view of th future of the Internet, it's service and application provision, and how that will fit into our personal and professional use of computers and the internet.

Then just as I finish writing this I see Dennis Howletts Post on the Google Chrome ELUA over at ZDNet and I can't believe that they actually think that this is acceptable behavior.

Oh, and at the point Chrome launched, Google's own plug-in for Lively didn't work. The there's the DoS vulnerability.

Google: time to sort it out and lead the future of the internet rather than seeming to treat your applications development with a lack-lustre attitude, and your end users with a significant amount of contempt.

Google Lively ... gone a little quiet?

Over a month ago now, Google sprung Lively onto the virtual worlds scene to a mixed reception, but certainly a lot of discussion.

Now, things don't seem to have moved on very much.

I was expecting Lively's launch to be rapidly followed up but some direction and commitment from Google explaining their intended direction, time scales, goals. This just doesn't seem to be the case.

We know that content creation tools are somewhere in closed beta, but have no idea when that will end. I do know that Google hasn't yet finished deciding on either rights management and copyright ownership for content creators, or plans about monetizing that content. Conversations with people at Google lead me to believe that those issues are being discussed at the moment.

The "Lively is only 20% complete" is an interesting stat that I'm not sure has ever been coroborated. What I'm more curious to know however is: how long will we need to wait for the next 20%?

The one thing Google Lively has over Second Life...

The number of blog posts about Lively seems to be increasing at a healthy rate, and some common themes are emerging.

A significant number (and you can count me in this group) are disappointed with Lively and what it offers. Some are glad to see Google enter this sector of internet communications and others are picking up on distinct aspects of Lively and it's emerging user base.

One of the themes that I've seen picked up in a number of places is the rate with which the sex/porn industry and it's fan base has jumped into Lively. There's no doubt that within the first 24 hours the first Lively cybersex rooms had been set up.

It's a bit of a sorry state of affairs, but lets face some facts about the history of the internet here: without pornography, games and file-sharing the internet that we use today wouldn't be anywhere near as developed and mature as it now is.

The same is true for virtual worlds as a whole, but one key factor is the relative youth of the virtual worlds market compared to the internet / world wide web as a whole. I think of virtual worlds in the same way I remember the internet about 7 years ago - more chaotic, more randomly mixed (with pornography popping up in the most unlikely of places and seeming to be 50% of the results from any web search). Second Life is a good example of this. Wonderfully creative content designed by all sorts of people and leading to some amazing experiences. Scattered in between is the virtual world equivalent of all those random sites I used to bump into on the web.

Something I noticed recently was that they seem to largely have vanished. The web seems like a much cleaner, nicer place to explore now. This is a change I'm waiting to see happen with the virtual worlds. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that there isn't a place for sex in virtual environments if that's your thing, but what I don't want to have to worry about is who's going to buy the plot of land next to my Second Life office and if they are going to build a brothel on it.

A suggestion for Linden Labs: wouldn't it be nice if anyone running an adult site in Second Life (was required to) set a flag on their land specifying that their site fell into that category. Then in my client application, I can set an option that says "don't show me adult content" and then my client simply doesn't render any avatars or objects that are within that piece of land? Seems like a simple process and would certainly make it much easier to promote Second Life as a business and educational tool. The only problem I can see with this approach is that it lessens that need to buy an island in order to get some control over what is around you, thereby reducing Linden Labs land revenues.

This is the one thing that Lively has over Second Life. No neighbors. My Lively room is a component on the homepage of my website. If I want to direct people to it, I can send them straight to my website, straight into the room. This is a branded experience and I have control over all the elements of it.

Second Life, until something changes, will always have the risk of someone erecting a 50m tall photo-textured penis right next to my office. Oh, and that isn't a challenge by the way. My current preference is still definitely for Second Life - just or the amazing scope of what you can do and (all things considered) how well it all works. But if Lively's artist tools are as good as they *could* be, and the rumor that they are they are only 20% through their development turns out to be true...

A little more Lively?

You may have seen my previous (and somewhat disappointed) post about Google's new web-based virtual world, Lively.

I was bemoaning the lack of an apparent strategy or any solid information about the future of Lively or the kind of service into which it may grow.

Not being one to give up on new technologies straight away, I emailed Google about becoming one of the content developers for Lively and tagged a couple of additional questions on to the end of the email.

The reply that I received from Danny on the Lively team at Google did provide a little more detail (I'm omitting Danny's surname so that he doesn't get a surge of emails from people guessing his email address).

On the subject of content development for Lively Danny replied "Content creation for Lively is in closed beta right now, but I put your name on the list of future developers. We are planning to release the artist tools soon and we'll let you know when we do."

Now this is promising. Comprehensive content development tools for Lively would make it much more interesting as a virtual worlds tool.

I also asked about plans for a Linux version of the Lively client. Danny responded with "We're trying to bring Lively to as many different operating systems and browsers as we can, but I don't have any details on when they'll be available."

That sounds even more interesting. Following a less-than-harmonious experience with my previous laptop, I'm very happy with my EeePC 900. This of course is running Linux (OpenSUSE 11 to be exact) and I'd much prefer to be using Lively on this, rather than resorting to a PC.

I hope that this information is the start of more detail being provided by Google about lively and it's place in their online strategy. I hope to continue my dialogue with Danny and will let you know any information as I get it.

Google's Lively ... a missed opportunity?

A couple of days ago I started spotting the press-releases about Google's new virtual world offering called Lively.

I have to point out that this is a Beta and so we can expect some fairly major changes before the final version.

Lively, however, seems to fall somewhat short of the expectation put upon it by headlines like "Google's challenge to Second Life" which appeared on the BBC news website. Linden Labs really don't have much to fear from what is very much inline with my expectations of Virtual Worlds a few years ago and reminds me a lot of Adobe Atmosphere.

Coming from the company that brought us Google Earth, this seems miss-targeted and limited in it's conception. The concept of a 'virtual island on your webpage' is quite interesting as a nice extension to your website or blog, but the execution of it will I think type-cast it into a younger / teen market.

The other omission is the lack of any apparent developer or content creator support, or a roadmap for the plans associated with this. Given that Second Life has somewhat set the bar in this I would have expected Google to have attempted to address the developer community about what they can expect to get from Lively over the next year.

One final point is platforms. C'mon Google. Asus launch the EeePC and cannot make them fast enough to satisfy demand. Acer, HP and MSI (and possibly others) are all producing similar platforms. What do these all have in common? They all run on a Linux based OS (although a few do offer more expensive / less well spec'ed MS Windows versions). Launching a plugin like Lively and not thinking about a Linux version (the Lively site only mentions a Mac version in the future) seems to be cutting off a significant part of your target market. To make the example - I can easily run Linux Second Life on this EeePC 900. Lively? No.

So, Lively is on my things to watch list, but is something I hope will grow into something that I can use, because it falls short of my expectations at the moment.