Google Lively – A Platform For Marketing?

Posted on July 14, 2008 by Robert Kingston

Many of you may be aware that Google has launched a new service for websites called Google Lively – a lightweight competitor to Second Life.

As this popped up, many marketing bloggers online have begun talking about how this might be relevant for for marketing purposes. I can’t say I have ignored it. In fact, I want to know – do you have any ideas for marketing and branding on Lively?

While Lively creates a similar experience to Second Life, it uses websites as a platform rather than purpose built software.

What Google Lively is About

It’s a platform for people to interact with one another when they visit their favourite websites. I think Niniane Wang (the creator) sums it up best on the Google blog:

“…to express yourself with and without words, and to do this in the places you already visit on the web.”

Can you imagine using your avatar in a 3D room to read the content of your favourite websites? This may be just one reality made possible with this new platform – and for those looking to connect with customers, it could be a dream come true.

Marketing on Google Lively

I’ve had a bit of a play around on it, and I’ve found a couple of features which I think could be very useful for any businesses looking to use this service. Currently you can:

Promote Your Youtube Videos
Post Links back to Your Site From Objects
Place Your Room on Your Website to Engage Visitors
Allow Users to Experience Your Brand First Hand

In the future I suspect you will be able to:

Contribute Objects, Room Shells and Wardrobes
Put RSS Feeds into Rooms
Place Advertising in Rooms
Program Events to Run
Buy & Sell Objects, Clothes, Rooms and Shells

Could you imagine the worth of a room which attracts 10,000 people daily?

Are There More Marketing Applications?

Google is busy testing a number of initiatives to make the web into a more social place. Just take a look at what Google has under their belt:

With all these projects working together, I suspect Lively will become a lot more popular. Especially as it matures and Google opens the doors for innovation through APIs and what not.

What Marketing and Branding Opportunities Can You See on Lively? Discuss…

6 Responses to “Google Lively – A Platform For Marketing?”

Gerco Wolfswinkel

- 14th Jul, 08 07:07pm

“.. a similar experience to Second life..”? Second Life is a full blown virtual world, while Google lively is more of a glorified chat box.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that per se – I can see some very useful aspects to the Google lively approach – but to me, and I suspect many other virtual world residents, Lively does not provide a similar experience.

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Ed Roach

- 15th Jul, 08 06:07am

Robert,

Welcome back.

With Lively, can you embed logos on t-shirts, billboards etc?

Ed

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Robert Kingston (author comment)

- 15th Jul, 08 06:07pm

@ Gerco – You’re dead right. Lively lacks many many features.

I haven’t tried out Second Life before but I think the main selling point of Google Lively is that it caters for the mass market so that’s probably why it lacks so many features. Maybe when it’s been online for long enough, more features (like the marketplace) will come available.

@Ed – Cheers, it’s been a while hey?

The functionality is there but it’s currently only enabled for a few trusted vendors. They say we will be able to create objects in Lively soon:

http://www.lively.com/help/bin/answer.py?answer=98535&topic=13370

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Noobpreneur

- 16th Jul, 08 02:07am

Robert,

Interesting review! I’ve checked Lively and yes, I guess it will be a new marketing platform that will exceed what Second Life has done, for one simple reason – accessibility.

For most Internet users, particularly in the developing countries, Second Life is a bandwidth eater that crash here and there. Google Lively is more lightweight – hence more accessible.

IMO, virtual life is hot and being hot means marketable

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Step-by-Step Internet Marketing Strategies

- 16th Jul, 08 01:07pm

Hmm. haven’t checked out Google Lively yet, but now I think I will.
Thanks

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ldonovan

- 25th Jul, 08 01:07pm

I haven’t tried Lively yet but I will. I personally like Glyphius.

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