Google publically launched “Lively” which everyone and her grandmother is comparing to Second Life. This is not the right comparision – Lively is actually far more similar to IMVU than Second Life.
There’s no user generated content. There’s no economy. And while embedding a 3D space on your website is kind of fun and novel, how would you actually use it productively? Mike Elgan at Computerworld thinks it’s a great tool for remote access telecommuters. But I’m not really sure what Lively would buy a telecommuter over, say, Skype.
What do you all think? Have you tried it? Do you want to develop content for it? I changed the sidebar poll to track your opinions. Leave some comments if you have more feedback.
[poll=18]
Yeah I checked it out yesterday, when I realized people can change their avatar names anytime they want I knew it had no lasting power. This is like a step up from AIM and with Meez combined. LAME!
I read about it on CNN.com of all places and decided to try it out. And Whimsy nailed it, it seems like glorfied chat rooms with little cartoons. I couldn’t get back to SL fast enough!
OMG… limited avies, clothes, custom options, not much to do but chat and dance and fend off 15 year olds. Controls are clumsy, making changes to anything is too slow. I soooo don’t think LL is losing sleep over this.
I tested it out as well and it is a lot more like IMVU and Meez. Albeit better than the two, as at least you have movement controls (even though they are horrible).
It’s still in beta so who knows what the future will hold. If I could develop content or at least change the avatar shape I would be more inclined to use it.
No mac client either
From what I have heard, user generated content is definetely in their projects ( with Sketchup -cough- ).Portability will come too, like every other google projects.
Given the horse power and visibility that they have, I don’t hide that I am seriously afraid of what the future reserves to us… I was waiting for this public announce since long. I think one of the big concerns is that they most probably will open creation generation to big industry before little creators like me, and even if everyone can, the price for a visible ad will not be in the 400000 $L a week…
I think we still have a little delay to adapt, but then…*shivers*
I have not tried it, and have no interest, as SL is my drug of choice!
I think you pointed the exact problem : ‘everyone and their grand mother’
Every one will know this, when only a little portion of half geek persons know secondlife.
I’m sure the user-generated content is coming, and I’m sure the Mac client is, too, but I don’t see this as competing with Second Life in too many areas.
I think that as Lively matures, there will be more educational users using Lively for discussions, library help, and even small online classes; Second Life has been good for these things, too, but Lively will offer a lightweight, low learning curve alternative. (It might even use less bandwidth than videoconferencing over Skype, particularly when meeting with larger groups.)
But as for this drawing large numbers people away from the more immersive and interactive experience of Second Life? I don’t really think so.
But it probably *will* draw large numbers of people who already (erroneously and without trying it) think Second Life is nothing more than elaborate 3-D chat, which is likely where all of the speculation is coming from.