Google yesterday launched a strange little product called Lively. It’s very much like the game Second Life, a 3D world populated with avatars of your own design who interact with other avatars. In truth, it’s very, very nerdy, but there’s money to be made there. Why?

These virtual worlds purport to bring people together, let them share experiences with each other, all that jazz. The truth of the matter is that Linden Labs (the company behind Second Life) and Google are merely constructing there worlds so they can attract advertisers. For a while, Second Life was thought to be the next big thing in online advertising, but then people realized only a very small segment of the population spends any amount of time there.

That’s what Google has to figure out, how to convince people to spend any amount of time in the world so that they’ll stick around long enough to sell ads. Google has made the barrier to entry quite low: Lively runs in Firefox and Internet Explorer, but only on Windows for now. Beyond that, you can jump right in.

Mind the furries, though. We hear they love worlds like Second Life.

Lively [Google via TechCrunch]