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Posts Tagged ‘Google Lively’

Lively never dies

January 7th, 2009

Lively was a site created by Google as a 3D chatroom and was closed on Jan 1st 2009. I have posted the story here.

It is now a defunct site, showing a closed notice.

Apparently, there are a bunch of people who loved or thinks Lively can continue although Google does not.

These group of people has now created Newlively.com and they are located in Bejing, China.

Even the website resembles so much of the original Lively.

Some interesting details:

Who is funding newlively?

The majority of the team members come from one enterprise. This enterprise provides the funding for the project.

How long did it take to create newlively?

From decision-making to the release of the trial version, it took approximately one month.

Why duplicate Lively when there could be possible copyright violations?

People are often emotionally attached to previous experiences and situations. Thus, if we create a 3D environment including room skeletons and an avatar that is already familiar to users, we help them by lessening the impact of loneliness and disappointment. After the closure of Lively, there is no greater happiness than to duplicate Lively for the sake of the Lively users. We understand that this activity would generate a certain degree of legal risk. However, whenever we remember the disheartenment and disappointment of so many Lively users, we feel that this risk is worth taking and the users will support us. Google is a great company. Its greatness is based upon quality customer care. What we create is similar to Google Lively, which the users liked. Based on this, there should be no problems. We are willing to prove it. The concept of Google Lively is great and good. Besides, we do not use any code whatsoever from Google Lively. The entire platform was created new from scratch, using a different technology altogether. Only the concept and the interface remains as close to Google Lively as possible, and the amount of work involved in doing this is quite insignificant in comparison to the creation of the entire system. Moreover, in our understanding of these kinds of platforms, copyright privileges should go to the content providers. As long as these content providers are willing to transfer the platform to Newlively, there will be no issues.

After the Lively users are resettled into this new platform, we will gradually incorporate more functions to enhance the experience of our users.

Our intention is not to replicate Google Lively, but to reproduce the Google innovative spirit and its complete respect for its users.

Is that a good answer to be a copy cat?

Amazing what these people in China are able to come up with. 😉

Good To Know, Google, Internet ,

Google to shutdown Lively, virtual chatroom

November 26th, 2008