Lively Doom....

Script discussions will have to wait. For those of you who don't know and rely on only me for your Second Life news (if that's the case I'm flattered but I'm not strictly a news site, I recommend New World Notes for that) Google launched thier version of a virtual world in the preceding days called Lively. Gwyn has this to say about the experience (full article here):

"As a 3D-chatroom-embedded-on-the-web, it falls behind almost every other product and application I have tried in the past 4 years, no matter where you wish to find something good. The animations are goofy and cartoonish, to the point of extreme irritability. The interface is not obvious, but then again, SL suffers from the same problem, and it’s just a question of getting used to it. There is no content creation at all; no way to integrate it with anything; no programming/scripting; no chat tools (even GTalk, known to have the least features just after SL’s chat system, has far more!). And, more important: no support..."

You really should read her full article and I'm quoting liberally, because Gwyn speaks what I am thinking most of the time. She's a brilliantly clear thinker on the future of Second Life. She continues to summarize her article by saying:

"Abruptly, since yesterday, a huge fracture was opened (we had signs that it would be coming) between what a “virtual world” ought to be (a fully immersive 3D environment where the desktop is replaced by a 3D viewer) and what Google now defines it to be (disconnected rooms, associated with websites, where a small amount of people come to visit what’s going on in it and interact by chatting). The lower the quality of Lively, the better for Google. If you read the comments on many blogs and comments you’ll see how everybody is over-emphasising the ability to put a Lively room on a social website’s profile, and how little importance is being given to usability, user-generated content, a contiguous landscape, programmability, or even mashups with other technologies. As long as you can embed a 3D room inside a blog post with the same ease you can place an YouTube video in it, people are happy.


And I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Google intends."

Once again you really should read her full article, however to be clear here are some of my thoughts:

There is a battle between tech companies, and all companies really, that can be very polite at times but it's all about market share and the bottom line. Linden Labs has done an amazing thing with the creation and nurturing of Second Life, and they are truly ahead of their time with the liberal thinking that allows someone like me to own the content I create. This is the thing that brought me to Second Life and keeps me there. Of course Google is creating something, as is every other tech company on the planet, or partnering with someone who is, if they aren't they aren't being responsible to their shareholders and they will end up like the other buggy whip makers. It's no surprise to me that there are other players joining the market of virtual worlds. What surprises me is that the idea of user generated content hasn't caught on in this space. Of course finding a model that causes a company with such liberal policies on content to make money isn't easy, but the lessons of youtube, ning.com, livejournal, and even google pages should not be lost on anybody looking to enter the sector. Essentially Linden Labs has thousands upon thousands of content developers working for pennies to create for users and we love doing it. Youtube exists and is seen as a valuable web property, and it's associated headaches with copyright content and user generated content are moderated and taken care of. There's no reason Google can't figure this out in a virtual world space.

For that matter there's no reason Google should be trying to reinvent the virtual world. Can you imagine what would happen if Google jumped on the standards that Linden Labs has started to pull together with IBM? If Google really wanted to enter the virtual space, they could create OpenSims in a huge way, beyond anything Linden Labs has the resources to match. With their supporting revenue they could undercut prices, create true hosting circumstances instantly acceptable to the majority of web users and create the new way of hosting sucn content right out from under Linden Lab. Their size would nearly guarantee their success.

Because all told, that's what this is, Hosting. Linden Labs hosts content we make, for ourselves and others. They are hosting the new form of the web. Why this dosen't make sense to other people confuses me... but then again, I'm not that smart. I won't be joining Lively until I can own the content I make there. The fun part for me is trying to make me and my partners successful. Yes I enjoy creating, but without an audience and a goal in mind it's just doodling in a sketch pad. I want to see if people like it and the only way that really get's demonstrated is if people choose to host it on their land, or pay me to create something special for them. I hope that Linden Labs dosen't lose their sight of this uniqueness and I hope other companies like Google adopt it. Otherwise I don't see a future for anything but corporate takeover of the 'new' web.

Enough doom and gloom.... come to Natalis and enjoy the beach.