Lively: Even Lamer Than Second Life

Iria

In retrospect, I was a fool to mention Barack Obama in a place where I could get body-slammed. But I was well into my first hour as an avatar in Google Lively, the search company's frustrating and dull new virtual world, and I was bored. I'd already explored the room designed to resemble Google's gleeful corporate headquarters; conversation there never progressed beyond "Hello," "How old are you?" and "What should we do here?" Now I was in a room that looked like a high-school science lab. It was a rough scene. A guy shaped like a bobble-headed baby was punching and kicking the female avatars, and another dude kept blowing things up. "So, have you guys been following Obama's overseas trip?" I ventured, to break the ice. "Didn't catch it," one woman said. Then the baby dropped a huge anvil on me, and that was that.
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Source: Slate

Matth

Looks like Lively is going to fall into the gap...

Too elaborate for virtual chat, too little to be a virtual world, and nothing to make it a game.

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Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread