Google's Lively for the enterprise

Google's 3D world Lively, which debuted yesterday, got a lot of buzz, not just because it's one of Google's more ambitious and fun projects, as Blogoscope's Philipp Lenssen contends, but because of its expected future enterprise implications.

As reported in Mike Elgin's Computerworld post, many see Lively following the same path as Facebook and MySpace. While those social networking sites first found huge acceptance in the consumer/teen world, they eventually broke through to become truly useful in real corporate and enterprise environments.

The real difference between Lively and precursor 3D worlds like Second Life is that its built to integrate with other Internet sites and applications. As Elgin explains:

"Like so many Google initiatives, Lively is extensible. It's a platform. So not only can users customize, but third-party companies can build "spaces" -- environments in which avatars can interact. (A company called Rivers Run Red has already announced the development of such spaces.)

So in the future, rather than using an expensive telepresence room or traveling to that industry tradeshow in Singapore, companies could build their own corporate avatar presence and do real business in an extensible, virtual 3D world. Stranger things have happened.