Virtual world death
By Pulkit Sharma

Google, with all the success in the world, has a few projects not doing too well.  Google’s Knoll, set up to match Wikipedia, has not had many takers. 

Now after only five months, Google has shuttered its virtual world ‘Lively’.  According to Google, it dumped Lively so it could concentrate on its core business of search, advertising and applications like gmail. (Every big company says that if a new product does not work out.  Part of the PR spin)

There are a number of virtual worlds (best known of which is Second Life) which got real dollar investments worth half a billion dollars this year.  So there is definitely a market here.

Could Google have saved Lively?  The Alleyinsider has an interesting article detailing the steps that could have saved lively.  These include supporting early-adopter communities of Mac and Firefox.  And scrubbing Lively of sex and violence.  Last and perhaps the most important:  Google should have made it part of their advertising platform.

Article is recommended reading.