Ok, so I’m a little behind in reporting this one but Ive been a little busy lately!

After entering the world of social media with the launch of lively.com only 4 months ago (google launches lively.com) Google has performed a huge u turn and pulled the plug on the virtual world which will be binned completely at the end of the year.

According to the google blog this is to allow it to focus it efforts on its core, “search, ads and apps business” but it is surely and indication that things weren’t going so well for lively.com and that the global credit crisis may even have reached as high as the big G, forcing them to cut unnecessary out goings and focus on core business units.

Now 4 months doesn’t seem like a fair amount of time to allow before deciding something is a no go, but lets face it, lively.com never appeared to have much going for it in the first place.  A virtual world which would sit in websites through applications and allow users to interact with the need for a central portal.  The format of the avatars was more sims than second life which would attract the youth audience, but how many teenagers have their own website? myspace and facebook page maybe but nothing which is stand alone.

Proof that even the strongest are susceptible to making mistakes and making knee jerk investments in the latest craze.  The difference?  Google was man enough to admit its error and is also rich enough to make 100 more in the hope that one of them is the next big thing!