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Google Lively VR Chat Reviews

Google recently released Lively chat. Create your own Lively avatar, and choose how it should to be dressed. If you create your own room, you can decorate it to suit your personality. Visit other people’s rooms, or even embed your Lively chat onto your website. What do all of my friends think about Lively?

Details, please! :) – James Mowery via twhirl

I’ve got to try to find out how bad now. – Ben Parr

Google jumps shark? Literally? – Andrew Baron

I was wondering when reviews would start popping up here. Thanks for saving me the time. – David Worrell

Now I just *have* to try! – mokargas

Just wrote something similar. I’m really disappointed – not the greatest of ideas and really poor execution. – Vince DeGeorge

Okay, now I have to try it because I’m a sucker for bad. :) – Morton Fox

I’m holding back trying it because I hate opening windows in a virtual machine. No Mac version is just insane – Duncan Riley

I wrote about it, too. But I’m willing to try anything once. – Hao Chen

tried it out today and wasn’t too impressed. Although if they implement an API that would allow me to integrate my users in there might be some value to it. – Brad Williams

Why? I thought it was a good try, and represented enormous potential to be the next SecondLife, as it’s able to run 3D stuff in your browser without having to download very bulky programs like SecondLife? SecondLife didn’t work for me when I first tried it 1 year ago. It always crashed.. Never touched it since.. – Winston Teo

I tried it, it is a very, very, very unpolished 3d chat room, no more, no less.. it’s not a social medium… it’s a fancy chat room. – David Silvernail

Almost all of Google’s first efforts are crap. They are betting the farm on distributed though, and this seems to fit with that strategy perfectly. – Kevin

No Mac version is beyond insane, it is just flat-out stupid. Why on earth didn’t they wait until they could release it for every platform? I mean, unless the Windows folks are being used as open beta testers…. Just seems very odd. I agree with you Duncan. – James Mowery via twhirl

I hate to say it, but I agree. The quality of the graphics is great, but the UI is downright awkward to use. The pop-up bubble messages are annoying and I didn’t see any way of private chatting. Customizing your avatar is pretty minimal too. – Jim McCusker

When a polished product exists in the market – i.e. Second Life.. why… oh… why! would you release this product that is clearly only in a pre-alpha version state? – David Silvernail

Second Life did not interest me, so I passed on Lively today. – Russellreno

Mine kept closing itself down before I could choose a character. Will keep trying. – sergiooooooo

Thanks for the review. I’m waiting… – Czar Derek Peterman

yea im a pessimist as well in regards to those kinds of web apps. I have no faith in that kind of freeform avatar stuff. – Anthony

was lively rushed out the door because of vivaty? – Kevin

We geeks really need to be careful of seeing everything as an opportunity to critique, if not outright bash. Can’t anything just "BE" what it is for an hour, a day, a week. What possible harm would come from someone trying it out? – Douglas E. Welch via twhirl

No Linux version? Typical. Of course, it’s Google. That means I *must* try it. :D – possible248

i agree, at first glance… FAIL – tommy payne

Comon.. Lively’s just a first cut. We should wait and see how it evolves. As they always say: "Release Fast, Release Often". – Winston Teo

Oh wait? Developing virtual worlds is hard? Who’da thunk? Google: There’s a reason most VWs failed so far. – Robert Blum

I Still want to give this and vivaty a solid chance before forming an opinion. – sergiooooooo

is Google Lively supposed to be like the answer to Yahoo’s Avatartown – Outsanity

I tried it. I shouldn’t have but I did. I think I’m traumatized. It’s Second Life with more teenagers. – Candace Holly

Blogged Lively vs. Second Life http://is.gd/OJYHao Chen

Thanks for the tip. SL is bad enough so I’ll definitely avoid this. – Jonathon

Yeah, I’m not really digging this app. I grew out of this virtual life phase on the internet a long time ago. – Dennis Jackson

Google is many many generations away from turning this into something useful, but at least they got one thing right – they put it on the web, not the desktop. – Nicholas Molnar

I’m surprised they didn’t compare it to Twitter, because that would be comparable. /smirk – Eric Rice

I don’t like that answer, as SL was a big waste of time for me. thanks for saving me the time – Jason Kaneshiro

My son: Lively? No Linux – no fun – Igor Poltavskiy

BTW, Lively should be compared to IMVU, not SL. Lively + everything you use from Google, now that’s entirely different. Thanks for skimming! – Eric Rice

Have you gotten Lively in your life yet? What the heck is stopping you from trying? Let us know what you think.

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12 Comments

avatar, and choose how it should to be dressed. If you create your own room, you can decorate it to suit your personality. Visit other people’s rooms, or even embed your Lively chat onto your website.

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avatar, and choose how it should to be dressed. If you create your own room, you can decorate it to suit your personality. Visit other people’s rooms, or even embed your Lively chat onto your website.

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it actually seems decent

I think I’ve used a program like this and it allows you to make an avatar and while your surfing the net you see other avatars that are on that website.

WOW! this is cool!

I like it but I know there’s still people out there who think second life is better.

Someone tried this sort of thing a long time ago.

It didn’t take then, and I doubt it will now.

It looks cool but whats the point of this project? I think they could spend their time on more profitable and better ideas than trying to get into second life’s market share, Not to mention the headache of trying to run a virtual world.

looks ok, don’t see much difference from imvu tho..

What Do You Think?