‘Number of active Meta Horizon Worlds metaverse users drops to 200,000’
Meta’s metaverse platform Horizon Worlds now has fewer monthly active users than it did in the spring. The company has also lowered its monthly active user target by the end of this year from 500,000 to 280,000.
Most Horizon Worlds users do not return to the app after the first month, writes The Wall Street Journal based on internal Meta-documents. The number of monthly active users has been steadily declining since the spring of this year. It is not clear how many there were then. In February, the company said it had 300,000 metaverse users, which included both Horizon Worlds and the Venues app.
Horizon Worlds is a platform where users can create ‘social hubs’, or worlds, similar to Roblox, for example. Venues is a standalone app for live events and does not fall under the numbers that The Wall Street Journal writes about. Because Worlds has few active users, it is also difficult to retain new users. New users complain about empty worlds where it is difficult to make social contact, so that they drop out faster.
According to the internal documents, nine percent of all worlds created by users have been visited by fifty people or more. Most of the user-created worlds have never been visited by others.
In addition to the empty worlds, visitors complain about the behavior of others. For example, other users would make misogynistic comments, which is reinforced by the fact that there are twice as many men as women on the platform. According to The Wall Street Journal, there is also disagreement within Meta about which part of the metaverse the company should focus on; on gaming or social contacts. Mark Zuckerberg would prefer to make social contacts.
In a response to WSJ, Meta says that metaverse is a “long-term plan” and that the company still believes in projects like Horizon Worlds. Last month, Meta placed Horizon Worlds on lockdown, signaling the company that new features will be paused until the user experience is improved. Recently, Meta presented a new high-end Quest VR headset and announced that it would introduce legs to make the platform feel more real.