Meta Horizon Worlds Continues To Fall Short

Horizon Worlds does not reach user goal

Into the meta-verse

When Mark Zuckerberg took his company in a completely different direction and renamed Facebook to Meta all eyes were on the social media mogul to see where his new project would take things. The leader of the social media giant decided to build upon web3 with a metaverse offering his company calls Horizon Worlds.  The platform has promised a lot with a very disney-esque motif and a virtual world full of avatars without a torso. 

 

High Hopes

When Zuckerberg started the platform he planned for the social media platform to amass 500K monthly active users by the end of the year. Currently, in October 2022 it seems that number may be unobtainable as there are less than 200K users currently participating in the web3 world offering by Meta. This number comes from reports from the Wall Street Journal and CNBC which show the actual numbers online on Horizon Worlds to be less than 200,000.

Meta’s Horizon Worlds seems to have a retainability issue. Most users that come onto the platform do not seem to want to return. The issue it seems is that the “worlds” that are being offered are not good enough to keep the visitors interested or even excited in the technology. Users that stay don’t even use 10% of the worlds that are available meaning there is 90% or more of the metaverse that has gone unused. The biggest complaint is that users feel there are no worlds that are interesting nor can they find people to hang out with. In the report on WSJ it was stated that even on the worlds that see activity it is only 50 users max. With a steady decline in activity since spring Meta has changed their stance on their projected numbers and now has a goal of 280k active users by the end of the year instead.

The Meta Quest

Meta is on a quest to become the top offering and destination for all who want to jump into the metaverse, even though Zuckerberg has recently stated a willingness to play fair with others. Plans for the company to do that involve selling of the Meta Quest hardware, hardware that has recently seen a very pricey upgrade. There is no good news on that front at the moment either as the $400 machines have seen a falling retention rate for the past three years. 

The situation is not a positive one at the moment for Zuckerberg and his team as the company has dropped over $700 million in market value as many continue to wonder about the validity of the CEO’s choice to rebrand his company. In order for the project to even work there would need to be a sense of urgency created, there needs to be a pulling factor to the project that keeps people coming back, but at the time of this writing even the employees allegedly hate the product.  Horizon Worlds is far behind other platforms such as Second Life which continues to see use and growth even for a program that was designed in 2014.

The Silver Lining

The takeaway from this is that the project is not complete yet and just like everything else in web3 there is going to be a need for time to prove what could be. No project jumps out of the gate an immediate success and the metaverse is still ever-evolving. The fact that Zuckerberg is all in and focused should give some a bit of ease even though the market is currently unhealthy. Success takes time and sacrifice is almost always a necessity for that success, the platform may be struggling at the moment but the metaverse is here, and it is here to stay.

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