Lively, Google’s virtual world, has been a flop

it's been out like 3 days. I agree that it seems dumb so far but google has released tons of stuff that seemed half baked and then over time gets better.<p>I remember everyone hating google talk when it first came out. No one liked Google news when it first came out either.<p>There is no guarantees but give it six months to a year before you're 100% sure it's dead.

Once again, google stumbles with something remotely social. They really need to stop thinking algorithm is king for non-search products. Also, I've heard many anecdotes of designers being treated as second class citizens. That has to stop.

I tried using it like 5 times in a span of 2 weeks. Each time it wouldn't connect. It's plauged with bugs, wonky UI and all sorts of things. Not something I expected from Google.

The virtual world thing will work, but these are half-baked non-functional attempts. These are the wright brother prototypes.<p>But the 3D world is coming, and it will replace our textual web. Many of us here will never change, but the new generation will switch.

People expected this to get big?<p>I think it would of been a surprise if it did get big and even though it hasn't had much of a chance, I still don't think it's a good product.

Well this is rather obvious. There have been a number of attempts at MMO non-games that were solely for player interaction--but I've never seen one actually work. People play games to have fun, or at least to interact with others to do something that they wouldn't be doing in real life.<p>Nobody is going to bother installing a multi-gigabyte glorified chatroom.

It doesn't seem to be doing that bad, actually. Their facebook appliacation has nearly 3000 active monthly users, and seems to be growing nicely.

I'm all for launching early, but Google could have afforded to keep this internal for awhile. Why release something that the lead engineer admits "is not as complete or polished as planned in designs"?

Props to Google for trying things outside their core competencies. It takes guts risk failure, especially when you're a big company.