So Much for Lively....

http://www.lively.com/html/shutdown.html


Lively no more

After careful consideration, we have decided to shut down Lively.

Since Lively's launch, we have been delighted to see the creative ways you've used the product. We enjoyed hanging out in Jen's coffee house, and checking out the Brasil Party room. We got a kick out of the YouTube videos in a variety of languages telling stories about your avatars. And we've been awed by the elaborate rooms that you've constructed, using mosaic tiles and photo gadgets in novel ways.

We will shut down Lively on December 31, 2008. Embedded rooms in blogs and other web pages will continue to show an image, but users will no longer be able to enter Lively rooms and interact.

Between now and the end of the year we encourage you to capture all your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms. Thank you for sharing this experience with us. We've learned a lot about how users interact in rich social environments, and we hope you've enjoyed your time with Lively.

Given that they never made any updates to it, and the population totally thawballed...

They should have come up with a project putting your Avatar into Street View. Add a button "walk around" and use 3d information extracted from overlapping shots. THEN integrate snaps from THAT back to the real "street view".

THAT would be something only Google could do.