Hardly any active user. Mark Zuckerberg is left alone in his Metaverse.

Metaverse is supposed to be the future of the Facebook group. Maybe someone should tell users that: the first numbers are disappointing.

Just last week, Meta, the former Facebook, presented the latest products for the Metaverse in a major presentation. Among other things, there were new VR glasses for professionals and new features for the Horizon Worlds virtual world.

But this visitor in particular appears to have far fewer visitors than Meta had hoped for. According to internal figures available to the Wall Street Journal, there are currently less than 200,000 active users. Most users only try Horizon Worlds a few times and never come back.

Second Life has more users

Metaverse should become the company’s future, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly emphasized. The number of users on its traditional apps – Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – is stagnant or declining, but there are still 3.5 billion active people, nearly half of the world’s population.

For Horizon Worlds, the Meta initially targeted 500,000 modest users by the end of the year, but the group has now lowered the target to 280,000. Thus, Horizon Worlds has fewer users than Second Life, a relic of the first hype around virtual reality at the turn of the millennium, which was founded in 2003.

Staff metadata should be forced

Even within the Meta, it seems the employees aren’t too enthusiastic about their own product. In work instructions at the end of September, the induction manager had to require employees to use Horizon Worlds more often. The mission should become “Falling in Love with Horizon Worlds,” the statement said, “The Verge” reports.

However, that is easier said than done. There are nearly twice as many men on the platform as women, and sexual harassment is a pervasive problem. A Meta spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that it’s easy to be “cynical” about Metaverse. But the company still believes that this is where the future of computers lies.