by Andrew Redfern @ 20th November 2008 11:52 am

Google has announced it is to close it’s recently launched virtual world chat website Lively. The project was launched in the summer and allowed users to sign-up and create their own interactive rooms and personal avatars with which to explore them.

The system represented Google’s ambitious foray into the world of Second Life and other virtual worlds but will, according to their official blog, be closed by the end of the year.

In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it’s the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people’s lives. But we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.

That’s why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.

It is thought that the reason for the closure is more to do with the problems the company has met whilst trying to manage and police the service. Such an open system gives internet users 1000s of places to interact with each other and moderating them all would be impossible.

In a final message to it’s users the Lively team encourage users to keep memories of their virtual worlds alive “We’d encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms.”

Would you like to know more about Google Lively & virtual world chat? If so, contact Hit Search, SEO and Google adWords qualified PPC specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible.

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