Lively's launch has been the subject of much discussion and analysis, not least as to what their strategic aim is with the service. Indeed, some have argued that Google doesn't really appear to have thought through what it wants to achieve with Lively. I have argued that Lively is ultimately about getting Google into 3D advertising. Yet another possible use case has now popped up, though: enterprise.
Terra Nova has an interview with Lively user experience designer Mark Young, in which he is surprisingly open about future plans for a Googler. He talks about a couple of specific changes which would be particularly important for businesses (my emphasis):
It's a challenge to create a simple GUI for large group discussions but we are hearing some demand for it from organizations and businesses. It will take a significant amount of R&D to make it easy to participate in a seminar with 100 people chatting...
Many people are asking for the ability to limit who can visit or decorate a room... There are a variety of use cases where groups, organizations and businesses need to limit access to members, customers or employees. We considered a sharing framework like the one for Google Docs where you choose to have a document be public or private - if its private then you grant access by sending email invites to the people that you want to share with or collaborate with. Now that we have a lot of users, we can test alternative ideas to find patterns that better match what people want to do.
There is a tension with Lively at the moment. On the one hand, if you visit Lively.com you will be faced with numerous, and apparently popular, rooms for cybersex –a potential problem previously discussed. On the other, however, Google is a serious company with a strong track record in providing services to businesses, particularly in the form of Google Apps. Trust and security are key concerns for enterprise users of virtual worlds, and Google could be in a strong position to address them, particularly when compared to smaller start-ups without their record. The fundamental question is: is Google a consumer or an enterprise product? The answer may be either one, or even both, but in any case changes need to be made to stop the very promising Lively descending into further strategic muddle.
Of course, if you come to the Virtual Worlds Forum in London you may hear more of Google's strategy, as the head of Lively, Mel Guymon, gives a keynote.
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