November 21, 2008

Lively.

Deadly.

9 comments:

Freeman Hunt said...

I've never even heard of Lively, so I'm not suprised that it tanked.

Pete said...

It is always good to see Google fail at anything. They are too big.

Prosecutorial Indiscretion said...

Too big to fail?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

You could say that again.

http://tinyurl.com/6bhx2n

Wince said...

I'm trying to think of the way Google could try to sell congress on a bailout of Lively.

What kind of dire consequences could Google forecast that would convince the public that Lively is deserving of the government's largesse?

Here's mine: Former Lively users, free of their time, might try to date your daughter in real life.

blake said...

I had heard of it and expected it to be much bigger.

That is, I ignore the Google announcements mostly, then, in a few years, when I hear about them again, I check them out.

I thought Lively had a lot of potential, and I sort of thought there'd be a Google effect. "Hey, you gotta check it out, it's Google!"

Sort of like people used to do with Microsoft, without the inevitable awfulness.

I figured Google would be able to get a lot of signups, which is what makes a network useful. But maybe everyone yet interested in the virtual life thing is already doing it. (Until the VL crowd comes up with something more compelling.)

David said...

Another reason why GOOG stock has been clobbered. Lack of focus, weak prioritization and money to burn. So they burned it.

Christy said...

Much as I loved Stevenson's Snow Crash I've never gotten the appeal of virtual life. Anyone here a fan?

blake said...

Well, Pogo and DBQ, I think, are both on WoW, which is a sort of virtual life.

I find Second Life appealing in that you can a) set up your own server and b) make game objects with code and even c) sell those objects for, like, non-virtual money.

Which is why I haven't gone near any of these things, except for Croquet, which is more academically oriented. I could easily see something like this eating my life.