Today was a big day for virtual worlds.

* IBM and Second Life have managed to figure out how to have an avatar move from Second Life to Open Sim.

* Vivaty announces public beta with Facebook and AIM

* Google announces their own virtual world, Lively.

These are all pretty big things.  Interoperability is something that’s been discussed for a while now and the idea of allowing avatars to move freely from one virtual world to another is a pretty sweet thing.  With as scattered as I feel in the social media realm these days, the ability to have just one avatar, one identity, that’s able to move around .. makes me happy.

Vivaty and Lively are virtual worlds that are web-based and they both allow you to create your own ’scenes’ and interact with others. There’s a lot of customization in both – you can change how your room looks, move furniture around, pick new clothes/hair for your avatar.  Vivaty works with Facebook and AIM and Lively is its own thing that you can embed in your own website.  Both very cool, both with a lot of potential.

I don’t see myself using either Vivaty or Lively much right now for a few reasons. The main reason is that both are PC-only at this point and I spend most of my ‘free time’ on my Mac. I’m sure it’s being worked on and I sure hope so.  The PC only stuff makes me cranky.  If we can get people to move from one virtual world to another, surely we can get these things to work on a mac.

I got an email yesterday from Vivaty letting me in on the news that they’ll be moving to public beta and that Vivaty will now also with with AIM.

I posted previously about Vivaty and the potential I think it has. It’s a cool little virtual scene environment that’s all web-based and for that alone, I think it’s a good thing. TechCrunch has a great post about Vivaty and this news so you can pop over there and read the whole thing.

One thing that I’ve been thinking about, however, is how useful this might be in AIM.  I use AIM a lot for work and to connect quickly with co-workers and friends. It’s a small little program that provides a fast, easy way to get answers.  Now, if Vivaty works with AIM is that something that would make AIM better for me? Personally, I doubt it.  I’m using AIM *because* it’s fast, easy and gets me what I need.  Vivaty is great, truly.. and I think it’s a good tool, but for me.. Vivaty and AIM are not a good match.

I’m also not one of those Facebook “chat” people. Facebook is fantastic and I certainly do have a Facebook profile, but for me.. that’s all Facebook is. I’m not using Facebook to chat, or play games, or interact with the community in general. I know a boatload of people *are* using Facebook for those things and I think that’s great. Do your thing.. I’m just not.

So, that being said.. I think it’s neat that Vivaty is in public beta and people can now add it to their Facebook and AIM and make your own scene and connect there. Good on ya, Vivaty.