Lively - SecondLife from Google

As a tech blogger I am really embarrassed to say I haven’t heard anything of this service before it was rolled into beta today. However, this means I was thrilled this morning to try it. Lively is a social playground made by Google, more in common with SecondLife than any other site, but for my taste Lively is oh so much better.

First of all, it all runs in your browser, so no need to switch to a different app, it makes things quicker and smoother, although you’ll need a quite powerful machine to run everything in all its glory. It took me all of 2 minutes to install, so it’s also easier on your system. Second of all, it just seems like so much more fun than SecondLife, just look at the graphics.

Lively tries to stand out from the crowd by giving you some cool features, and if I know Google, there are many, many more along the way. You can interact with other users, watch Youtube videos on the TV’s (together if you want), create rooms, avatars and so on. So far nothing groundbreaking, but I’m guessing that Google Maps, search, and everything else Google has will be implemented soon enough, I’m particularly interested in seeing the maps development. So far Youtube implementation is most interesting to me, you can create screening rooms for fun videos, your own videos, or anything you’d like people to see.

The single thing that caught my eye and interest most was the looks. The easy going, but not wacky design works for me, although I guess it may deter some people. I think the focus here is on fun looks which still enable realistic interaction and it looks to me like it worked. You can choose to go to an island, a graveyard or a sky city, but all look equally cute to me.

If you like SecondLife or other similar sites you’ll love Lively, but in the end it’s still nothing more than a simple virtual world. Fun, maybe a bit addictive, but only marginally useful.