
Lively, Google’s virtual world, has been a flop - cawel
http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11968413&amp;subjectID=348963&amp;fsrc=nwl
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STHayden
it's been out like 3 days. I agree that it seems dumb so far but google has
released tons of stuff that seemed half baked and then over time gets better.

I remember everyone hating google talk when it first came out. No one liked
Google news when it first came out either.

There is no guarantees but give it six months to a year before you're 100%
sure it's dead.

~~~
unalone
To play Devil's Advocate, the difference is that GTalk offers very useful
functionality. The Gmail integration was top-notch and the fact that it used
Jabber meant that I can use it with iChat alongside AIM without effort. This
isn't offering anything useful: virtual worlds add complexity where complexity
isn't needed. Used to be Google was great at avoiding useless clutter - see
again Gmail and Gtalk - but as time went on they've slackened, Gmail didn't
progress at all - versus their competitors - and even Gtalk isn't really
revolutionary, it's just been pushed with other products.

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cstejerean
I'd love to check out some GMail alternatives, what are some competitors that
you think have a better product?

~~~
jfarmer
A lot of my friends swear by Yahoo! mail, but they also pay for it.

~~~
cstejerean
I actually hate the Yahoo mail interface.

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ivankirigin
Once again, google stumbles with something remotely social. They really need
to stop thinking algorithm is king for non-search products. Also, I've heard
many anecdotes of designers being treated as second class citizens. That has
to stop.

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prakash
_They really need to stop thinking algorithm is king for non-search products._

Source or Is this just anecdotal evidence? I do agree with you that a better
algorithm doesn't guarantee an automatic win.

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ivankirigin
Generally, the company is engineering driven. This is well known.

A product manager / designer friend of mine was asked to code on a white board
during an interview. That is retarded.

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prakash
cool. thanks.

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truebosko
I tried using it like 5 times in a span of 2 weeks. Each time it wouldn't
connect. It's plauged with bugs, wonky UI and all sorts of things. Not
something I expected from Google.

~~~
cstejerean
It has a major flaw so far: "Requires Windows Vista/XP"

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maxklein
The virtual world thing will work, but these are half-baked non-functional
attempts. These are the wright brother prototypes.

But the 3D world is coming, and it will replace our textual web. Many of us
here will never change, but the new generation will switch.

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evgen
Yeah, because 3D is so much more useful that 2D for ummmm..... let me think
about this one for a while. The 3D virtual world will not be coming for a
very, very long time. Until we have a cheap and simple way to do 3D
presentation the whole virtual world thing is a non-starter; once that appears
you can start to talk about how things might, possibly, change.

~~~
maxklein
And 640K will be enough for anyone. There is no point in twitter. Instant
Messaging is for kids. The MP3 Player market is saturated. The million dollar
homepage is retarded.

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evgen
Rather than cherry picking failed predictions (btw, the million dollar home
page is _still_ retarded) you should try to explain what it is that a 3D
digital environment offers that makes it so superior to a 2D environment. I
guess the difference between us is that I have actually worked for a failed
virtual worlds company back in the day (Electric Communities) and so I know
both how hard it is to pull this off from a technical side as well as how many
of the things you think people might want to do in 3D are really things they
will happily do using regular web and internet services.

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dmix
People expected this to get big?

I think it would of been a surprise if it did get big and even though it
hasn't had much of a chance, I still don't think it's a good product.

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DarkShikari
Well this is rather obvious. There have been a number of attempts at MMO non-
games that were solely for player interaction--but I've never seen one
actually work. People play games to have fun, or at least to interact with
others to do something that they wouldn't be doing in real life.

Nobody is going to bother installing a multi-gigabyte glorified chatroom.

~~~
stcredzero
Actually, this is what lots of MMOs end up being anyhow. Being a leader of an
alliance in Eve or a merchant, the most used tools are TeamSpeak and the chat
rooms. Lots of tabletop Role Playing Games also end up being social gatherings
where the primary enjoyment is the resulting laughter, and the game was just a
pretext.

~~~
minstrel
"[...]and the game was just a pretext."

Which is exactly the point. Without the pretext of the game, less people would
show up for the gathering, resulting in a lower "resulting laughter" quotient.

As one of the "shy ones", I can confirm that having a shared activity
encourages me to come to the event, and ensures that noone is "left out" (as
their character has something to do, even if they personally have nothing to
add socially). An interaction within the confines of the 'game' encourages
more voluntary interactions, not to mention giving people a pretext for
conversation, etc.

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marketer
It doesn't seem to be doing that bad, actually. Their facebook appliacation
has nearly 3000 active monthly users, and seems to be growing nicely.

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plusbryan
I'm all for launching early, but Google could have afforded to keep this
internal for awhile. Why release something that the lead engineer admits "is
not as complete or polished as planned in designs"?

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neilk
Compare: <http://niniane.org/>

With the July 2006 version:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20060715233014/http://niniane.org...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060715233014/http://niniane.org/)

And that's just the oldest one that archive.org even has.

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comatose_kid
Props to Google for trying things outside their core competencies. It takes
guts risk failure, especially when you're a big company.

