Joey Seilers new Blog: Virtual Goods News

Joey Seiler, the author of Virtual Worlds News recently started a new Blog: Virtual Goods News. Just to keep you updated.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Google Lively to shut down its Teenage 3D Avatar Chat Rooms in December

Read the original Google Blog why Lively is shutting down

Livelys days are numbered. This is a really surprising news for today, published by the official Google blog. I am sure that the news will arose a pretty big discussion about virtual worlds. Why did Lively fail or what did Google expect from Lively?

There are a lot of questions. I would like to know how many users Lively attracted and how much time the avarage user spent in world with theit 3D avatars and rooms.
My personal assumption is that the users rooms were too separate and there was not enough public space to meet. Separate rooms work for social networks like cyworld and stardoll, while they are not live waiting in their rooms to be visited or if there is enough virtual space infrastructure to connect the rooms like it is in Habbo. But Lively intended to be live, so this is a different pre-condition.

Lets see which reasons will be discussed in the blogosphere in the next days.

Join the Virtual Worlds Group at LinkedIn

Virtual Worlds Group at LinkedIn

Did you know? There is Virtual Worlds group in professional social network LinkedIn, initiated by my daily readingvirtual worlds news. If you like to join the network just klick the screenshot and login.
See you there.

Study about Serious Virtual Worlds

To download the study please click the picture.

Sara de Freitas wrote a study about virtual worlds. In fact the study is named "Serious Virtual Worlds" and is a part of the JISC e-Learning Programme. I have not read the study so far but I´m pretty sure that it includes some useful Statistics and interesting points of view, if you are interested in virtual worlds generally.

The study prepared 5 case studies in the following categories: # Role-Play worlds, # Social Worlds, # Working Worlds, # Training Worlds and # Mirror Worlds.
Thanks to Sara for her work, it helps virtual worlds to be taken serious besides entertainment and besides the fear of some people (well, mostly politicians) that virtual worlds might be a drug and make teenagers escape from reality. Virtual worlds are a lot more and they will be a part of peoples future life.