Great article as far as comparison of both the virtual worlds is concerned. I have been working on second life for quite some time now and i also logged in to try google's lively and find that the LIVELY did not apppear all that "lively" to me. First things first, like second life you also need to install a software for lively to run, though it might come bundled with the google pack. Then Lively as is being marketed by google is more of a 3D chat engine where one can go and see and give the expressions he would normally convey through a smiley in normal chat rooms. Yes this will enable people to leave their traditional chat rooms and join "lively". As far as competition to second life is concerned, lively has too much to do to reach that level. Second life was never thought of a chat room and was marketed as more of a world in which one can live an entirly new life that he longed to live or dreamt of living. It has an economy of itself and people can make money through that, though the money uptil now can not be converted into real dollars. Its now become a great web 2.0 platform for companies to market themselves as here is a world in which you can make a replica of ur infrastructure (or even better it), Can hold conferences with your shareholders (like the one done by Arcelor mittal, can train their professsionals or trainees without spending much. Also E-education can actually get a great jump from second life. Lively, as of now, doesnt even come near to it and for now the only only thing good about it is that its from the house of google. Still its in its beta version and google is definately going to innovate on the present product and build something that could really challenge the dominance of second life. Till then lively will make a space of its own and take the market of tradiional chatting rather than that of a virtual worlds.