Google's Lively no Second Life killer

Lively is a free service that has elements of social networking

Google's 'Lively' virtual world will not emerge as a Second Life killer and should not be judged as such, according to analysts.

Eden Zoller, a principal analyst at Ovum, warned that comparing the two virtual environments is "premature and a simplification".

"Lively is a free, value-added service that has elements of social networking in the form of chat and the ability to share video and photos, topped with the fun of doing this in a virtual space. But it is a simple virtual environment," he said.

"Animation is down to basic movements, and the rooms and avatars are not user generated but chosen from a catalogue with personalisation capabilities thrown in. The more accurate competitor here is IMVU, not Second Life."

Zoller added that, rather than being comparable to Second Life, Lively is far more adept at adding a new dimension to existing social networks such as Facebook with the inclusion of a simple avatar-based interface.

"The idea is to enable Lively members' feeds, buddy lists and log-ins to tie directly to their social networks," he said.

"This is smart, as is the move to make Lively browser-based so that it is not tethered to a particular website but can be entered from, or embedded in, other websites."

This approach is not accidental, according to Zoller, as it allows Google to add value to its existing web properties such as YouTube and Picasa by allowing them to be embedded directly into Lively, thereby adding a new dimension to the sharing of these files.

"There could also be advertising opportunities further down the line in the form of product placements in a room or video advertisements playing on a virtual TV, for example," the analyst said.

Furthermore, Lively is still in its early beta stages, giving Google plenty of time to refine the product and tackle some of the challenges, particularly those surrounding adult themes.

"There are already reports that adult-oriented rooms are appearing and we know from Second Life that avatars can get aggressive with each other and don't always play nice," said Zoller.

"This could become a concern for a service where the minimum age to sign up is 13 years old.

"Another challenge Google will have to think about is how to improve on the graphics and animation in Lively, which are not sophisticated and could pall once the novelty value wears off.

"Nevertheless, if things don't work out Google can call write Lively off as an interesting if flawed Google Labs experiment and quietly wind down the beta without too much harm done."