The 'Lonely' Metaverse: Fad or Future?
The 'Lonely' Metaverse: Fad or Future?
New data on how many people actually use the metaverse and what they think.
Photo Source: Decentraland via Coindesk
With all the excitement and innovation surrounding the metaverse era, it’s time to take a step back and analyze whether this is a fad or real trend.
At Don’t Count Us Out Yet, we aim to bring you new insights from both positive and negative perspectives. As you decide whether or not the metaverse is for you, we’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest information.
In light of new documents analyzing active user data in both Decentraland and The Sandbox, companies with more than $1 billion valuations, the metaverse is appearing to be a lonely place. According to Coindesk, DappRadar recorded 38 “active users” in Decentraland and 522 “active users” in The Sandbox within 24 hours. Also, the largest number ever of “active users” in one day was 675 for Decentraland and 4,503 for The Sandbox.
However, DappRadar only counts “active users” as users who log in to make purchases in each platform’s native utility token. This doesn’t include users who log in to interact or attend an event, such as metaverse Fashion Week.
Sam Hamilton, Creative Director at Decentraland, told Coindesk that the platform had about 8,000 users on average per day, not specifying between active and passive users.
This data definitely surprised the team at Don’t Count Us Out Yet, but more information tells us these numbers surprised companies like Meta as well.
Meta’s goal for Horizon Worlds was to hit 500,000 users by the end of 2022, which has now been revised to a goal of 280,000 users, according to Daily Mail and documents referenced as seen by the Wall Street Journal. Also, a majority of the 200,000 users who have already entered the system don’t return to the virtual world. Daily Mail also stated that less than 10 percent of metaverse worlds receive more than 50 visitors and the majority of the worlds receive zero visitors.
Why is the metaverse having trouble attracting and retaining users?
Some minor issues have evolved, and while users complain, some problems may be worth a laugh. For starters, avatars without legs in Horizon Worlds.
Photo Source: Meta via Daily Mail
With real-life legs being out of VR headset’s view, they weren’t being rendered correctly and displayed worlds of floating torsos. Thankfully, the problem has since been resolved.
Other issues about interest may require more creative rather than technical solutions. As pointed out by Fast Company, people already connect with each other in the real world through games and cameras, so what does a VR headset add? Having conversations with other avatars won’t be as emotionally effective in connecting as seeing facial responses.
Speaking of faces in the metaverse, a lot of people have found avatars, more specifically Mark Zuckerberg’s avatar, to look somewhat soulless and outdated.
Another reason is how there doesn’t seem to be a specific need for using the metaverse yet, such as to make money, exercise, find a partner or learn something new. We are still on the search for this stand-out factor.
Despite the technical issues, there is a long way to go to help users feel connected, which is the key to increasing user retention on the platforms. Without encouraging user retention and interaction, there can’t be a viable metaverse.
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Best,
Ariana for the Don’t Count Us Out Yet Team