Lively on Facebook
After an exceptionally long absence from the social network I have recently begun to experiment with Facebook again. As one might expect, there has been a great deal of activity since the last time I interacted with the network - notably including the Beacon debacle, as well as the launch of countless new applications.
Of particular interest in recent Google news, I’ve just discovered that a Lively application for Facebook now exists. This discovery came after a few hours wasted trying (unsuccessfully) to figure out how to embed my existing room in my Facebook profile.
[NB: Based on my investigation so far, it would seem that Facebook's code restrictions on what tags can or cannot be used were such that using Lively's iframe-based code snippet has so far proven impossible.]
Lively on Facebook
Enter the Lively by Google application. On the surface this seems to be virtually identical to the offering available outside Facebook with a few significant caveats.
First and foremost you cannot unify your Google Lively activities (avatars and rooms) with those created within Facebook. As the help site indicates “Merge Facebook and Google Account?“:
“If you download or access Lively from www.lively.com, a Google Account is required.
If you’re logged in to Facebook, we don’t require a Google Account.
For this reason, your Facebook Lively access is separate and cannot be linked to your Google Account.”
As such I had to create a brand new room and a brand new avatar. It is looking like there may be way to use existing Google rooms with an avatar created in Facebook, however I haven’t figured out whether this is or isn’t the case.
Unfortunately as seems to increasingly be the case lately, Lively crashed and I’ve not been able to access it since - both within Facebook as well as the external rooms created at Lively.com directly. Interestingly I seem to have been the one to cause the outage - still ongoing as of the time of this post.
Having said that there are interesting implications for the fact Lively is now available in Facebook. First and foremost, the demographic and usage habits are very similar between the two. Users of social networking platforms frequently spend countless hours interacting via various means - including posting commenting on each other’s profiles, sending messages, posting photos and videos. Google’s launch of Lively for Facebook is a natural step in that sense.
Only now, users will have th opportunity to interact virtually via avatars. Given the amount of attention many users devote to personalising their profiles (both on Facebook and elsewhere), I would expect some very innovative uses of Lively to emerge in the coming months. That is, if Google can manage to keep the application from crashing.
Embedding Lively Rooms from Facebook elsewhere
It would seem that Lively rooms created in Facebook can be embedded outside of Facebook, where they can be used by other users. What credentials need to be used to enter the room is a bit of a mystery to me currently - though I suspect they’ll need to be Google.
If anybody would like to help me test this theory please click the screenshot below to enter the room and try entering your Google login details. If you could then relay your findings in the comments area I’d be grateful!
Getting Started with Lively by Google
The following presentation was created with a primary focus on the Facebook application for Lively, however much of the content and screenshots are applicable to the version outside Facebook.
