Google Lively is out, and it looks interesting. The space - a 3 dimensional virtual world brings in some visual elements of Second Life and There.com. Lively has predetermined rooms for chat and conversation and although there appears to be an exceptional amount of avatar customization, from the outset there seems to be little more environmental control other than designing a room.
The immediate question is what are the greater community building and tolerances of the Lively system. After just finishing Clay Shirky's new book and really thinking about the nature of group formation tools I wonder if this is just another one and how tolerant will it be (bing a corporate space) of alternative and non traditional groups using Lively. The tool and its technological capacity are far less important to Lively's future compared to the management philosophy that governs it.
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