The launch of Google’s virtual world Lively last week has perhaps been marred by its enthusiastic adoption as a venue for ‘cybersex’. A glance at the most popular rooms on the service reveal that those looking for cybersex have flocked to Lively. I suspect that this is because of the room-based architecture, rather than a single persistent virtual world; Lively’s structure encourages niche interests which prefer to exist separately from other interests. Another factor is that there is little clear ‘purpose’ to Lively at present. It is not targeted at any particular demographic, there is no economy and certainly no tasks to accomplish. It is perhaps best described as a simple 3D chat client at present, which of course necessitates its users to find something to chat about!
Google’s moderation policy at present appears to be that sexual content is fine, but no nudity is permitted. In some ways this is sensible; there’s a clear line in the sand which nevertheless allows a broad range of activity. However, I would argue that it probably needs to move beyond this position if it wants to achieve good growth; for the mainstream audience choosing which room to join, it will be off putting to have to wade through sexual rooms before finding one which suits them. Google may also have difficulty justifying the availability of these rooms to members of Lively between the ages of 13 (the minimum age to join according to the terms of service) and 18.
The solution may be simply to remove all sexual rooms from the index; Lively rooms are embeddable, and this would allow the sexual content to continue, but without Google facing the risk of offending those who are not looking for it.
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