(Reuters) - Google on Tuesday launched a three-dimensional virtual experience website, similar to the popular virtual world Second Life.

The service, called Lively, uses real-time virtual world characters known as avatars and three-dimensional graphics to congregate in virtual rooms.

“If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website, you can immediately get a sense of the room creator’s interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose,” Niniane Wang, engineering manager, who oversaw Lively’s creation, said on Google’s official blog.

Lively also allows for playing YouTube videos in virtual TVs and showing photos in virtual picture frames inside the rooms, Wang said.

Google worked closely with Arizona State University while developing the website.