So much for the idea of a second Second Life. Lively, launched by Google this July, has already been deemed something of a failure, and the search giant’s issued a notice that it will more or less kill the collection of virtual rooms at the end of December.
Given the economy’s condition, it’s not hard to understand why Google won’t support an unsuccessful product. A note on the Official Google Blog acknowledges, “[W]hen you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off. . . . 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.”
Lively’s Brief Success, Fast Fall
And Lively, in case anyone isn’t sure, definitely qualifies as a bet that didn’t pay off. Even if Google plastered the various virtual rooms with ads, Compete numbers suggest that few folks stuck around past the first month. A look at Lively’s list of “active” rooms verifies its status as a ghost town – by page 3 of 53, almost all of the areas have only received one or two visitors.
Google’s investors can breathe a tiny sigh of relief, then, and Lively fans shouldn’t take the news too hard. At least Google’s given them over a month to prepare for the cutoff, and a formal announcement available through Lively.com explains, “Embedded rooms in blogs and other web pages will continue to show an image.”
Linden Lab hasn’t made any sort of statement in response to this development just yet.
