Google Lively, Google's first attempt at a virtual world, is now dead -- or will be as of 2009, according to the Official Google Blog.
"It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads, and apps business," claims the ever-self-aggrandizing blog.
Sure. Blame it on your over-packed plate. How very sacrificial of you -- although, it seems these numbers below might have at least something to do with Lively's demise, no?
We wrote about Lively when it was first released, in an editor's blog entitled Four Reasons to Shun Google Lively -- and we also gave it the No. 5 spot in our report Top 10 Google Disappointments. Google had released the service in July as an attempt to create virtual chatrooms that could be embedded in any Website.
While Google and its friends might prattle on, blaming the failure on overwork, the economy, aliens, John McCain, or mother issues, it was clear from Day 1 that the service was not ready for beta and that Lively wasn't going to make it. It was just bad. Plain and simple.
Of course, some in the media still went to great lengths to call this piece of trash a "Second Life Killer" and claimed that Google had "validated the space" with its release of a virtual world.
But when the name "Lively" turns out to be simply ironic, and Google has to pull the plug on its alleged game-changer, the only thing validated is that the Google media hype is out of control and embarrassing.
It is the predictable result. Today’s Internet is much more available than it used to be 10 - 15 years ago. Furthermore, customers have enormous opportunities to chat, to write messages, to post photos and to discuss news. Fast growing social network Facebook has hit the 100 million users mark, according to a statement today by Dave Morin, the company's Senior Platform Manager (as citied in Kirkpatrick, 2008). Online dating service match.comhas more than 15 million members (“Wikipedia”, 2008). Yahoo! Messenger counts 248 million active registered Yahoo global users (“Wikipedia”, 2008). Many people are lost in this space of available options and as a psychological aspect use popular and convenient sites. In this connection, the goole.com which is an excellent research source and the provider of great projects such as Project 10 to the 100th or Anita Borg scholarship is not ready to compete with Internet spheres which originated as social networks and main goals of which is to give to members opportunities to communicate and to hang out in the web.
David, thanks for the ebituaries list. You are correct that Google as a company has far more successful business plan than the those in the list you have provided. On the other hand, Google's success has so far centered only as a "ad placement" company. I am trying hard to think about anything other than ad placement has brought in money for google and so far nothing. Hopefully they get their focus on couple things and get success before blowing up stock holder's value.
Yeah, it has the same interface but it’s more convenient and you have literary limitless possibilities in all spheres of communication and multimedia. It has its “cultural” limits, but not for long.
Nicole you said “Most likely something else will spring up as the next-big thing and make Facebook seem outdated”. Do you know what? You’re right. This is Russian Vcontacte which gains an advantage over Facebook, Google lively and U-tube altogether.
I still haven't wrapped my mind around Nicole's "Second Life Killer." The sad thing is, I bet there were boardrooms in various places (or at least wooden conference tables in a meeting room) where fists were pumping with the vision that Second Life was goin' down.
Out-Second Life'ing Second Life hardly seems like you're making the world a better place or showing off your business prowess.
All of it reckons, "Congratulations, Mario. But the princess is in another castle."
Oh, Paul. There you are. You're right. I did let out a Hillary Clinton-style cackle this morning when I read Google's blog. Couldn't help it.
But, no, of course that is not a PhotoShopped image. That came from Compete.com.
Here's another one comparing Second Life and Lively. Looks like it was a "Second Life Killer" for about 15 minutes.
The spike lasted only as long as the media hype lasted and then the numbers completely dropped off. It was a worthless service! It was very buggy and painfully slow and relatively pointless. No great loss.
In re, "I see the irony of posting this in an enviornment that values 'eyeballs,' so here's hoping this site is immune to such things..."
We're not immune here; in fact, our parent company, UBM/TechWeb, reduced staff earlier this week with an eye toward the same tough times that publishers and companies in just about every sector are facing.
That being said, Internet Evolution had its best month ever in October by every measure: unique visitors, return visitors, total hits, and message board postings (due in no small part to frequent posters like you, Brian). It's nice to be able to share some good news when the headlines are dominated by gloomier economic stories. We are extremely grateful to our readers, message board moderators, and our sponsor IBM.
You must be loving reporting this and feeling very ecstastic in doing so!!! That chart looks a little bit like a "photoshop" exercise!! I still can't relate to it though. Mathematically, it is easy to postulate the spike(of course it has nothing to do with a perceive media hype!!) and the drop down especially when it occurs during the peak time of the current economic woes!!!
Can you help provide us with 'real' charts of unique visitors for the various virtual worlds for the period under review so that we can make a trend analysis? As a person with a very strong legal mentality, i will accept Google's reason for calling time off on Lively until i get very substantaitive data to disprove them. Let's not jump the gun on this one!!!!
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We do a lot of grousing here on Internet Evolution, and usually for good reason, considering the amount of nonsense that keeps this industry afloat on its cloud of hot steamy air!!!! But... we can still happily acknowledge those titans who have succeeded in leading the way or paving new ground in their respective fields and, in turn, give credit when it is well deserved.
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What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
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Search companies and social networks are collecting incredibly detailed information about their users, says Steve Saunders, who predicts that these 'profiles' could one day become commodities to be bought and sold by companies on 'profile markets' or 'identity exchanges’ – the digital DNA equivalents of the financial and commodities exchanges on which stocks, oil, and gold are traded.
One of the most important Internet issues of all time is being ignored by the media. In this three-part video series Steve Saunders explains how search companies are turning the tables on their users by creating user profiles for financial gain, and how soon this trend will explode into full scale profiling.
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