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."
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