Long before the metaverse, there were networked 3D chat rooms that attracted millions of traffic. Just look at the online game Second Life, which has 64.7 million players today, or IMVU, which has 7 million users to date. In 2008, when these online worlds were in their heyday, Google decided to make a fuss about something similar.
The company designed a concept — that allows users to create their own avatars and rooms where people can chat. This is very similar to Second Life, but there are some differences that make Google’s work, Lively, unique.
Despite these differences, Lively’s audience was noticeably small, and within a year, Google decided to better use its resources elsewhere. When the company shut down the same year Lively was released, it had only 10,000 active users, which didn’t seem to live up to Google’s expectations.
Because of the platform’s short lifespan, Lively is now just a little-known history of the internet, but its story offers a glimpse into the internet culture of the late 2000s.