This week Google have launched a new online 3D world called Lively. It’s basically a chat application where you can customise your avatar and 3D environment (room) to meet your friends or invite newcomers.
Lively represents Google’s answer to a 5-year-old site, Second Life, where people deploy animated alter egos known as avatars to navigate through virtual reality.
Google thinks Lively will encourage even more people to dive into virtual worlds because it isn’t tethered to one website like Second Life, and it doesn’t cost anything to use. After installing a plugin, a user can enter Lively from other websites, like social networking sites and blogs. Second Life is different as you have to download a program, run it from your desktop and you have to purchase credits to build features in your new world.
Google has created a number of sample rooms that can be copied or altered, or users can start from scratch and build their own. Once you have created your “room” you can then embed it within your website or blog to enable your visitors to sign up and join you.
Google’s Lively looks to be a promising web product and has the potential for another advertising venue for Google once it becomes viral and attain the same level of popularity and usage as that of Second Life.
Last year Google began a service ‘Print Ads’ to enable advertisers in the US to place advertisements in hundreds of US newspapers, via the Google AdWords system.
Google is currently in negotiations with several UK publications to scale out the service out here. Google takes a percentage of the advertising revenue for every ad placed - a middleman you could say.
Why the ‘real’ world?
Currently Google’s advertising platforms have concentrated on the online environment, so why make a move into the ‘real’ world? Well, most of the public do not have the capacity to take out an ad in a national newspaper. Google’s vision is to enable John the Plumber from Plumpton to place an ad, without going via the usual marketing/advertising moguls. It also means that the larger advertisers can try and squeeze a better deal by doing it online.
According to a British newspaper boss, the introduction of the service to the UK “is an interesting development, with the prospect of bringing new advertisers into our newspapers”, the Sunday Times reports.
“If advertisers find it to be an effective channel, then there is the prospect to form direct relationships on a more normal basis,” the executive added.
Click here to learn more about how Google AdWords Print Ads work.
This week Google have launched a new online 3D world called Lively. It’s basically a chat application where you can customise your avatar and 3D environment (room) to meet your friends or invite newcomers.