Lively

You’ve probably heard that money doesn’t grow on trees, and it’s true, but what most don’t know is that it grows on air. Google has this down to a science and has proven it with Adsense. For those of you that don’t know adsense, Google’s adsense program connects companies looking to advertise with websites that are looking to sell advertising space. An advertiser might pay $5 for a click on the ad, Google keeps $4.50 and pays the website owner .50 cents. Google’s adsense program just made $4.50 out of thin air.

Well, Google has come up with another way of generating money out of thin air, most people just don’t see it yet. It’s called Lively.

Lively is a online service that let’s you create your own avatar and meeting rooms to interact with one another. Big deal right, wrong. Right now, you’ll see something like this:

It’s a room created by someone and has a flat screen mounted to the wall and avatars walking around talking with one another. The room comes complete with music, video and more.

If you join, which of course is free, you’ll find a number of rooms and avatars available to choose from. Right now, there is a limited selection and the cost of the avatars are set to free hinting that in the future, you’ll have to pay for them.

No, that’s not where the money comes in and this part is most likely a way for visitors to make a little cash or perhaps earn credit to buy items in this virtual world.

Thousands of people from around the world zoning out in a virtual world - see it yet?

OK, here is a hint, look at the walls, what do you see? They look just like walls, don’t they? They’ll stay that way until the virtual world takes off, then you’ll start to see advertising inside the pictures hanging on the walls, products, like Coke or Pepsi cans laying around, shirts with advertising and more.

Imagine having the ability to monetize virtual space, something that never runs out yet generates an incredible amount of money. Worlds (a similar virtual meeting service) had this many, many years ago and it never really took off (small company, no marketing); with Google, I’m sure the this will be a popular product with plenty of marking behind it.

Expect to see the following with Lively:

• Advertising – the real purpose behind it all.
• Popularity rankings for your avatar (virtual person)
• Clubs - credits to enter while designer earns credits.
• Clothes store – credit to buy while designer earns credits.
• Transporters – cars, roads if not too cpu intensive.
• Malls – shoppings with links to real online stores.
• YouTube integration – for those flat screens you see.
• Pipe in content from other sources, such as your pictures, etc.
• Widgets – for integrating your Lively Space into your blog, Facebook or MySpace.

There are countless items I’m forgetting, but the point is that Google has found yet another way to monetize the web. Lively, check it out and watch as it grows and dominates the virtual meeting market!