TidalBlog: Did Second Life and OpenSim just eat Google’s lunch?

The answer is probably “no” but it is interesting to expore precisely why.

There is a widely held belief that Google and Microsoft could easily turn their geospatial products into mass market virtual worlds containing avatars. While virtual world products such as Twinity have indeed focused on replicating real-life locations, neither of the major players has, as far as I know, stated this as a near-term goal. Moreover, I am reminded of Cory Ondrejka’s observation that the now-defunct Google Lively was room-based to facilitate balancing resource requirements, something that may well prove challenging on the scale of Google Earth. This seems to be borne out in a recent interview with Popcha!, one of the Lively third-party developers, who suggest it was a combination of economic climate, technical scaling issues and uncertain business model that ultimately did for Lively.

Read more at:

via TidalBlog: Did Second Life and OpenSim just eat Google’s lunch?.

Screenshots – Google-Lively.com – Fan site for Google Lively’s community. Forum/Discussion. Screenshots. Downloads. Rooms. Avatars. More!

Interesting site to upload screenshoots of Google Lively rooms !

Admin for site points out how visible now vitual spaces and virtual rooms are now because of google’s entry into 3d web – is this true ?

Screenshots – Google-Lively.com – Fan site for Google Lively’s community. Forum/Discussion. Screenshots. Downloads. Rooms. Avatars. More!

List of 50 Virtual Worlds video tour – itsReal

Earlier I posted that 345million has been invested in Virtual Worlds this year – this movie Initially posted at marketfactnl – has been translated (close to) below for this part of the world… When i first starting hearing about Second Life in 2006 – much has happened in the space – this video is a tour of some of the virtual properties around today – Google Lively & Twinity appear so the video is coolly current–

Virtual Worlds in the near future are going to play an increasing role in our lives. The fact that Google with Google Lively its first footsteps in the digital universe continues, suggests that more has happened than just a new gimmick. The number of virtual worlds is also growing. Most of the virtual worlds in the Netherlands we hear nothing or very little about. Yet another far-from-us-bed-show? Gary Hayes is currently engaged in an investigation into virtual worlds and he has recorded his journey on YouTube. This provides a seven-minute film in which 50 virtual worlds pass the revue.

Second Life, HiPiHi, Kaneva, Twinity, ActiveWorlds, LagunaBeach vMTV. There.com, Habbo, Google Lively, FootballSuperstars, Weblin, AmazingWorlds, CyWorld, Whyville, Gaia Online, RocketOn, Club Penguin, YoVille, Webkinz, BarbieGirls, Prototerra, IMVU, Spore, vSide, Tale in the Desert, SpineWorld, Stardoll The Manor, There.com, ExitReality, Vastpark, Qwaq, PS3Home, GoSupermodel, Grockit, Croquet, Metaplace, Coke Studios, Dreamville, Dubit, Mokitown, Move, Muse, The Palace, Playdo, Sora City, Voodoo Chat, TowerChat, Traveler , Virtual Ibiza… Are you on your journey?

On his site Gary also refers to a beautiful visual of the Examination Kzero where several virtual worlds in a useful overview (jpg) are plotted against each other.

EVERYONE should be doing videos

– I have seen this video 3 times before reading the content above – andrew peters aka aplink

PS: theRedlightcentre missed a debute in the video – i wonder why ?

Cybersex & Minors on Lively – itsReal

Second Life Herald Investigates Lively…cybersex & minors

“u wanna cyber?”

Minors on Lively seeking Cybersex

At this point I tell myself that sometimes in the news business you have to be a total pro and put up with truely grotendous pervs, but I’ll give him an out. I’m supposed to be 13 after all, and mom wouldn’t like this at all. Will he back off?

Second Life Herald: Robot Closet Sex In Google’s Lively Chatrooms.

google strikes again – Knol lives Lively – itsReal

Does anyone have a say ? Google is now chasing the wikipedia set of people with Knol – which follows fast on the heels of their entry into the 3Dweb or is it the other way around – is there no stopping google – and why should there be ? Does anyone have a say ?

From Official Google Blog

Knol is open to everyone

7/23/2008 10:31:00 AM

A few months ago we announced that we were testing a new product called Knol. Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today, we’re making Knol available to everyone.

The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people’s heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.

The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.

With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call “moderated collaboration.” With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!

Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.

We are happy to announce an agreement with the New Yorker magazine which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker‘s extensive cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics.

Everyone knows something. See what people are writing about, then tell the world what you know: knol.google.com

Posted by Cedric Dupont, Product Manager and Michael McNally, Software Engineer

The Official Google Blog

dusan writer’s small worlds small minds Ouch – itsReal

This morning I awoke and as usual after grabbing my first coffee (of many) for the day i checked into my mail to see what was happening – and my rss feed from metaverse journal sent to me dusan’s latest lenghty post about the emerging virtual worlds business sparked by the Google Lively media hype I assume, but has in fact been around for quite some time like second life. (see Interview with CEO GoGoFrog)

Mr Blue Haired dusan, managers to conjure up images of old, that are a distant memory in my mind on how limited we were in reaching consumers in the “OLD days”

Life was so much easier back in the day when there were three stations, and a few radio networks, and the major choice was whether to plop down coin for a spot on the Superbowl, the Academy Awards, or to keep sucking up all the airtime on the Gong Show.

…and what we all know is a reality with early adopters is that they want to travel to mars, but only have a budget to get out of the earth’s atmosphere…

“We have a vision, but you don’t have the code”
OK. So like I say. I sell stuff too. You get paid for things and sometimes you flop – you promise something you can’t deliver. You paint a picture of an IMAX movie and it turns out your client has a budget for black and white TV, or your target audience all lives on farms and can’t get to a theatre even if they wanted to.

And then a nice link to ESC’s roadmap…. thanks

Sibley came out with his roadmap, reminding us that Second Life isn’t ready for prime time – not without access to the server-side stuff anyways. So instead of pitch in (unless I missed that post) with the servers over on RealXtend or OpenSim they’ve gone Flashy with the rest of them. White label it – build your own virtual world for under $100k, throw whatever logos on the wall you like, embed some games, and you’re off and running!

…and then an ad for some place called Loco Pocos some kind of furry land which i will check out for curiosity only later…

In the meantime, when I want a place where you can chat, be cute, solve puzzles, socialize, make stuff, customize my appearance, I’ll head to Loco Pocos to see what Millions of Us and ESC and all those other gurus of virtual worlds SHOULD have built instead of the stumbling ruins that were CSI with their 100 signs and their obvious clues.

..obviously I have just cut and diced his blog post – but from where I sit if Google wants to have virtual rooms with its globally launched platform Lively, and developers, who have been hit in their pockets with a slow down in virtual world spending buy corporate early adopters, want to and get the skill sets to support virtual rooms, it has to be good for the entire Virtual Worlds marketplace.

How does dusan expect developers to stay in business if for now, and i repeat for NOW – fully immersive worlds like second life require a greater commitment and understanding by consumers and evangelist corporate marketing heads with few new marketing dollars to spend.

from my perspective (and it is solely MINE) I welcome the Small Worlds, as these worlds will drive new immediate revenue’s to companies on both sides of the business, bring consumers in with minimal fuss and OPEN everyone’s eyes to the bigger ultimate picture which is the fully immersive 3D worlds, we are all passionate about it.

In this case small size is important as a gateway to BIG.

APLINK – itsReal

Lively versus Facebook, says Gartner – Metaverse Tribune

The Metaverse Tribune – Lively versus Facebook, says Gartner

Gartner has released a report on Google’s Lively which argues that Lively is more of a competitor to social networks such as Facebook than to established, large-scale virtual worlds such as Second Life. Steve Prentice, author of the report (whom is also presenting at the Virtual Worlds Forum in October), argues that Lively occupies a ‘middle ground’ between traditional social networking sites and full-blown virtual worlds. He cites Lively’s room metaphor, as opposed to Second Life’s whole world. Further, Lively lacks an economy and only has limited content creation options.

In some ways he is right. Lively is perhaps best described at present as visual chat, and certainly doesn’t match up to the vast functionality offered by rivals such as Second Life and Twinity. In that sense it does have more in common with social networking websites than it does with other virtual worlds: it is perhaps easier to see a user going into a Lively room to chat to their friends instead of using Facebook than it is to see a user enjoying Second Life as a substitute for Facebook.

However, I would argue that all virtual worlds are competitive with all social networking sites. The 2D web and the 3D metaverse are just different ways of doing the same thing: communicating over the internet. Beyond even that, though, it seems to me that the two will merge. We are already seeing this with Facebook. Applications such as Vivaty sit on top of the social graph which Facebook provides. The virtual world and the social networking site will become two different interfaces to the same use case. And that’s also what Prentice is arguing: ‘We believe this could mark the start of a transition to a new kind of three-dimensional social Web.’

Google boards 3D Web JET with Lively – itsReal

But it isn’t mac ready ! – Still Google’s entry into the 3D web landscape has been anticipated for quite awhile – browser based 3D rooms are however along way from true immersive virtual worlds like Twinity

Lively Promo Video

Media Release : Rivers Run Red Now Developing 3D Web Spaces Built on New Google Technology

Renowned Design and Development Company Launches Its First Customized 3D Space on the Web Using Lively by Google

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Rivers Run Red, the immersive spaces company™, today announced it is developing customized 3D spaces built in Lively, a new product by Google^TM. Rivers Run Red also has a new design team in place to keep up with the anticipated high level of demand for companies/brands looking to incorporate Lively by Google as part of their digital strategies. Rivers Run Red is a participant in the Preferred Developer Program for Lively by Google.

Lively by Google is a product that lets people create and share persistent, virtual spaces on the web. As a lightweight application fully integrated with the web, Lively rooms can be embedded on websites and blogs all over the web with just a snippet of code. Lively users can also stream their own content, such as videos and photos, directly into their rooms.

“In the last five years, we have encountered high demand from companies looking to provide 3D experiences for their communities on the web,” said Justin Bovington, CEO of Rivers Run Red. “Lively by Google is a promising solution for web-based 3D environments and will only help to make the prospect of the 3D Web a reality.”

Rivers Run Red created its first 3D space in Lively, called ‘Avalon,’ which serves as a demo area for visitors to explore how Lively can help turn their content into a destination. To view the room on Lively, please visit: http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=-7255981103276414777