Google announced on its blog that they are pulling the plug on lively. This is strange coming from Google since they have been successful at almost everything they’ve ever done. They should have read my review, it might have saved it.
In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it’s the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people’s lives. But we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.
That’s why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. 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.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.
We’d encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms. More…
The Livelyzens (Lively users) are coming together to appeal to Google
to keep Lively alive.
Lively is a great platform for interaction as well as creativity. It
is easy to use, browser based, embeddable on webpages to bring a 3D
experience right on your website. While Lively has been in beta and
has limited capability in terms of the objects and avatars available,
the Livelyzens have been able to come up with very creative ways to
create art from what is available. All this in a “clean” 3D world
thanks to Google’s vigilance in getting rid of rooms with
inappropriate content. More than anything, Lively has become a place
to make friends for life – from all over the world with wonderful
people.
Please visit our website http://livelyzens.com and participate in the
Lively Machinima contest we are conducting to show the creative
potential of Google Lively. Please also sign our online petition
http://livelyzens.com/petition.aspx
We kindly request netizens to support us in reviving a wonderful 3D
world that is a kid friendly and a creative space for art and
interaction amongst adults.