'Facebook → Meta' Changed Its Name, but Meta's Transformation into a Metaverse Company is Questionable

Last Year-End Opened 'Horizon World' Fails to Reach Half of User Target
Self-Deprecating Phrase 'An Empty World Is a Sad World' in Meta Internal Report

Meta's ambitious 3D virtual world, 'Horizon Worlds,' is showing lower usage performance than initially expected.
Photo by Yonhap News Agency, Meta Platforms' 'Horizon Worlds.'

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyunjung] A 'hot girl summer rooftop pool party' without women, a 'killer village' with no one to kill... This is the reality of Horizon Worlds, Meta's (formerly Facebook) ambitious virtual reality (VR) platform launched at the end of last year. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 15th (local time) that it obtained internal Meta documents revealing that Horizon Worlds is performing far below initial expectations.

Horizon Worlds is a world where users create avatars to engage in various activities such as shopping, partying, and working in a virtual space. Meta changed its company name from the widely known 'Facebook' to 'Meta' to break away from being just a social media company and to make a new leap as a metaverse (3D virtual world) company, but reality has been tough. Only 9% of the virtual spaces created by creators in Horizon Worlds have been visited by at least 50 people. Moreover, most visitors do not return after a month, causing the user base to continuously decline. An internal report even used the self-deprecating phrase "an empty world is a sad world" to describe this situation.

Given these circumstances, Meta conducted a survey among Horizon Worlds users to analyze the causes. Respondents expressed various complaints such as "there is no metaverse world I like," "there is no one to hang out with," "people don't look real," and "avatars have no legs." However, a bigger problem is that only 514 people responded to the survey.

According to the documents, Meta originally set the monthly active user target for Horizon Worlds at 500,000 by the end of this year but recently drastically revised the target down to 280,000. Currently, Meta's monthly active users are below 200,000, meaning the user base must increase by 40% to meet the revised target.

There are multiple factors hindering the use of Horizon Worlds. The current gender ratio of Horizon users is 2 males to 1 female, and there have been repeated cases of sexual harassment and assault committed by some users through avatars, along with frequent bugs (errors). Additionally, using Horizon Worlds requires a 'Quest' VR headset, which is expensive and continuously updated with higher-end models, making it harder for users to enter. On the 11th, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced a new 'Quest Pro' product for professionals, priced at $1,500 (2.19 million KRW). On that day, Zuckerberg announced, "Horizon Worlds' avatars will soon have legs."