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

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

Welcome back.

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

Ed

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.