Late to the Dance: Google's Lively Tries to Bring Sim Living to Web Contexts

Google's new Lively virtual reality platform is now available, a stab at helping Google to find a place in the expanding world of virtual worlds. In its just-up form it's not surprisingly a work in progress - Windows-only compatablity, a thin inventory of virtual looks and gear and apparent problems with memory management and networking - but there's enough to see that this is a different kind of play from other simming environments.

Like the popular IMVU service Lively is not an entire alternate world with limited real estate and the ability to travel from one "place" to another geographically. Instead, Lively is a series of rooms or scenes that can be selected from a menu or a search and can be embedded into any Web page with a snippet of HTML code. This makes sense given the embedding strategy that Google is using via its OpenSocial initiative, making it easier to insert a particular room into a particular Web page and making it inviting to people already in your real-world social network. The Second Life concept of defining "scarce" prime locations was appealing only to those used to trying to create artificial scarcity. It's a far better strategy to adapt virtual reality to the unlimited social real estate of the Web, where any context could be the right context for a social experience with people who offer more trusted relationships. The OpenSocial connection will probably put membership in Google's Gtalk messaging service in a different light also, encouraging people to bring their real-world networks into both text and virtual reality communications.

Google's blog mentions the ability to use objects defined in your Lively space on your desktop also, providing a bridge from the virtual into the more personal world, but also made it a point to integrate its own YouTube videos and Picasa photos into a member-defined room to enable people to share in something more than just the usual chat-room banter. The animated avatar figures can also take actions based on typical chat room symbology - [hug] sets someone putting their arms around you, for example - and there seems to be a fair amount of physical exploration embedded into the platform. Still, judging by many curt reactions from some of the early adopters it's not a platform that's going to win over serious gamers and VR zealots.

And that may be OK - if Google can find its own brand of enthusiasts that are interested in how virtual reality can enhance real-world relationships more effectively. Platforms like IMVU and the emerging Twinity platform are popular because they help people to escape into a more ideal world, one in which the real-world barriers of physique, culture, social status and, yes, age are not barriers to social acceptance in the eyes of people needing that kind of security. Lively is likely to be a virtual world in which people can adopt alternative personas if they want to but will be more likely to use a slightly idealized real-world persona to share with other people. That may not appeal heavily to people who need the security of other-worldly worlds to meet and greet other people, but it's probably more likely to appeal to the 80-plus percent of people who are used to being themselves most days. It's hard enough for me to keep up with the real world and my social media networks and I suspect that most adults feel the same.

Google needs some stronger social media mojo beyond its current initiatives and a bridge to a younger generation used to online gaming, so Lively may be an innovative step forward to put their current social media initiatives in a more valuable light. However, if Lively gets the "lame" label early on it may take a while to get that enthusiasm going. Once its capabilites show up in embedded content it's more likely to be an attractive alternative than just text messaging or - gasp! - emails. In the meantime I did find it interesting that one of the Lively rooms was for Digg fans. Fodder for the acquisition rumor mill, but in the meantime a good example of how more Google capabilities need to be in the middle of global conversations that create valuable context for content. I go by my real-world name in Lively, don't diss my gear too much, it's the best I could do on short notice.