Since everyone appears to be in Social Networking, Google Inc. decided to take part in it as well.

Google launched a new service where people can mingle and socialize virtually in fantasy rooms. Rooms like Chess Board, Superhero HQ and Antiweb became among the immediate favourites following its Tuesday launch.

The new Google service called “Lively,” is actually the company’s response to an already popular site, “Second Life,” where users are able to deploy animated avatars to navigate and explore virtual reality.

Google believes that the service “Lively” will be more popular than “Second Life.” This is primarily because Lively is not restricted to another website like Second Life, also the service is free.

Users need to register and download a client from Lively.com. Users will then be able to enter the world of Lively through blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook.com and MySpace.com

This Google services takes social networking to a higher level. Lively users can create a unique avatar. Options such as gender and even race or species are readily available to new users. Each avatar can be customized. Users can change the identity or clothes of their avatars, or allow them to show emoticons at a simple mouse click.

Lively also allows users to create original digital environments, much like how users are free to create profile themes in many social networking sites. Each environment can be decorated with a wide variety of elements ranging from real-life objects to out of this world items.

Source: Yahoo News