Google’s Lively Virtual World Is Just a Glorified Chatroom

Google just recently announced the beta version of Lively, their 3D virtual experience. The announcement blog makes Lively sound like Second Life's cooler and more popular cousin that also happens to have a lucrative hedge fund.

It's not.

Lively is actually little more than a prettified chat room. It certainly looks good, but it will probably be in beta for a while longer judging by the problems Information Week had when they tried out Lively.



But Lively has some really attractive features ... if you like virtual chat rooms. It's an opportunity to create your own virtual room that can be viewed in your browser (after installing the Lively add-on of course) and decorate it how you want. There are already hundreds of personalized rooms that people have created, and true to internet conventions there are already a bunch with titles like Sex Room or Virtual Sex Cave. Google said that users can interact through their avatars but didn't mention anything more than giving hugs. We'll have to wait and see if the customization features really allow the creation of sex rooms.

The real draw for users is supposed to be the customizable avatars. You can make them look and emote however you want in order to give others a better idea of who you and what you are thinking. But after that, Lively is just a personally designed 3D chat room where you and your friends can hang out without actually hanging out.

You will have the option of viewing YouTube videos on virtual TVs and using the Google Gadgets in the chatrooms themselves. But that hardly seems like enough to make Lively serious competition for Second Life and other virtual worlds.

In short, Lively is anything but lively. If you like chatrooms, get excited. If you like virtual worlds, take a pass.

You can check out other ways of communicating with friends through our review of the best Social Networking websites.

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