Not a Second Life Killer, but a Lively Addition to the 3D Space

re: Not a Second Life Killer, but a Lively Addition to the 3D Space

Rick | Digado — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:45:34 GMT

Hello Laura,

Thank you for quoting me, and to elaborate a little on my statement here - 'the market' I was referring to was really that of Habbo, IMVU and a dozen other kidworlds, not Second Life at all.

The problem is most of these worlds (Habbo, IMVU) evolve around a social context based on entertainment and status. Habbo Hotel is really competative for teens, as are other kidworlds which usually provide some sort of gaming aspect or even complete narrative (Like the disney worlds).Obviously Lively lacks this competitive or narrative element so far.

The 3D chatworld is see as Livelys main competitor that doesn't quite fit that discription is IMVU. However, IMVU has been agressively advertising on nearly all networks through their google campaigns for quite some time now and has seen no significant increase in usage (at least not significent enough on Habbo's scale).

Thats why I think it would have taken something far more persuasive, or remarkable, to get into this market for Google without (ab)using their major advertising distribution channels such as youTube. Lively doesnt really offer any USP's except embedding, something which I dont think will be 'the killer app' to what I perceive to be its core market (early teens).

re: Not a Second Life Killer, but a Lively Addition to the 3D Space

Laura P Thomas — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:48:55 GMT

Stefan,

Thanks for the additional information about OpenSim. I've been aware of it, and although not actively participating at the moment, I do follow Project Manhatten updates regarding OpenSim exploration via @Dr_Manhatten on Twitter!

~Laura

re: Not a Second Life Killer, but a Lively Addition to the 3D Space

Stefan Andersson — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:24:51 GMT

Laura,

I read your article, and just wanted to make sure that you know about the emerging opens source alternative OpenSim (http://opensimulator.org) - which basically is an open source Second Life grid, licensed under the BSD license.

There are already a plethora of 'free' grids besides the Second Life on, and there's content transfer options.

There's a couple of companies, like Tribal Media, that are taking this open source software and transforming it into customized business applications - opening up totally new possibilities for companies to couple their business back-ends to their custom 3D world - but still with the well-known look and feel of SL.

Tribal Media also has a grid of their own, Tribal Net (http://tribalnet.se/) where you can choose either to self-host a region, or to rent a hosted one, SL-style.

At the moment, we don't support scripting, as there's still some issues with security and stability, but this will be enabled within a few weeks.

Please drop by, download the software, and try it out for yourself?

re: Not a Second Life Killer, but a Lively Addition to the 3D Space

Aaron Uhrmacher — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:04:18 GMT

Great post. To your point, LIvely isn't a Second Life killer. In fact, it feels like a different type of experience entirely. This will be a big hit with people that were initially interested in Second Life, but who were quickly overwhelmed with the possibilities and frustrated by the learning curve.

Lively's 2.5D environment and user interface will help introduce virtual world environments to a much larger audience and might be a good play for many businesses. It looks like a market for virtual goods is already built-in and ready to go, and communication, while limited, is still easy to facilitate.

The people you talked to for the post are probably not Lively's target audience. This feels like it's for mainstream internet users that currently aren't participating in other similar environments. And I wonder if it's fair comparing a 2 month old virtual world to one that's already several years and many development cycles more mature.

I think it's probably still too early to evaluate, as the platform will likely evolve over the next 12 months, so I'll stay away from making too many judgement calls here. But it feels like a good balance between what's already offered in the market.

re: Not a Second Life Killer, but a Lively Addition to the 3D Space

Jonas Karlsson — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:55:11 GMT

Laura,

I agree that most users may not want to program and create things, though enabling that seems to lead to lots of user-created content very quickly, making it more likely that users will be able to find thigns that interest them.

What I was trying to convey in my post was that, even if you don't want to be a full-flegded builder or scripter, to realize the full potential of virtual environments, you need to be able to "communicate in 3D", by which I mean things like placing markers to highlight things in the environment, collaboratively sorting clusters of text and images floating in clouds over your head, or dropping a fail-whale on somebody's head to indicate a slight disagreement.

It's too early to tell yet what direction Lively and the other platforms are heading toward - I'm fairly optimistic that we will start seeing some more impressive things in the coming months, that take us way beyond the "3D chat room" concept.