Meta’s Flagship Metaverse Is Glitchy and Mostly Empty | WSJ Tech News Briefing

foreign [Music] this is your Tech news briefing for Monday October 17th I'm Julie Chang for the Wall Street Journal filling in for Zoe Thomas nearly a year ago Mark Zuckerberg CEO of what was then called Facebook made a big announcement at least for the company I am proud to announce that starting today our company is now meta the shift from Facebook to meta was Zuckerberg's way of saying hey we're all in on the metaverse as you may know the metaverse is a digital realm you can enter through a VR headset or using augmented reality on your smartphone or even just a web browser a lot of people have called it the next evolution of the internet so how have things been for meta since the big Rebrand a year ago apparently not so good that's according to the company's own internal documents which were reviewed by our Tech reporter Megan barbrowski who joins me now Hi Megan thank you so much for coming on the show yeah thanks for having me so let's first start with the metaverse if I've never been there tell me how do I get there what do I need how much does it cost yeah so there's a bunch of different metaverse throughout the internet and this is basically like each company has their own basically online world that they call the vetiverse and So Meta has a bunch of different apps but the main one is called Horizon worlds so you have to buy these virtual reality headset for about four hundred dollars and once you set it up get into it there's this one app called Horizon worlds which is primarily used to socialize with other people and meet other people and it's composed of like a bunch of different worlds that people are making and you can visit these worlds and so I spent some time in there for our story and I mean a lot of these were worlds are empty there's not a lot of people in them and one that I did find that had about 20 or so people into it I was you know trying to conduct an interview and you know there's a lot going on um there's like children running around there's you know some people interrupting my avatar did get harassed so that did happen but definitely there's a lot going on and not a lot going on at the same time you've been to Horizon and you said it was mostly Barren they're just weren't a lot of people there I mean how empty are we talking here so there's a lot of Worlds that have been built and less than 10 percent of them are actually visited by more than 50 people so a lot of them just like remained basically empty and in addition to that we reviewed some internal documents that show currently less than 200 000 people are going on to Horizon worlds so that's less than the population of two fall in South Dakota so I mean compared to like meta's other apps Facebook Instagram WhatsApp like those together are reaching more than 3.5 billion average monthly users and so the contrast right now is pretty Stark so they originally wanted to reach 500 000 monthly active users by the end of the year and in recent weeks they've actually taken that figure down and said our new goal is actually 280 000 because you know they're struggling to get there any insight as to why Horizon has been so empty based on the internal documents there's a lot of problems with the Glitchy technology also people have said they can't find worlds they like they can't find their friends the other complaints include you know the fact that these avatars don't really look real they're still like a bit cartoonish and then I've kind of more comical one is that none of the avatars have legs which is I think just like a point people like to harp on and then there's also like some people have complained about other users not behaving or acting badly and you know people just don't want to be around that and what has meta's response to all of this been do they say we're working on this obviously this is not a finished product this is something that they're still developing and it's not done and so I do think there's some people who are in meta's corner in that regard who are saying you know like look this is a work in progress but certainly I think it's still worth looking uh how that progress is going which has not been too great for meta yeah I think that's a fair point you know meta saying that good things do take time but as you've alluded to now this hasn't been an instant success for meta is that a problem for them so certainly this is like they've said it's a multi-year project but the question is more does the company have time for a multi-year project they're in a battle with tech talk and other social media companies right now for users they're really pushing reels and video content and they're you know trying to stay relevant right now they do want to pour a bunch of energy and investment into this project but at the same time there's people who kind of want to see a more immediate payoff and are looking a bit more short-term than maybe meta is all right Megan we'll have to leave it there wsj Tech reporter Megan bobrowski thank you so much for joining us yeah thanks for having me I'll maybe see you in the metaverse sounds like a plan and that's it for today's Tech news briefing if you want more Tech stories check out our website wsj.com I'm Julie Chang for the Wall Street Journal thanks for listening [Music] [Music]

Channel: WSJ News

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Keywords: meta, metaverse, meta explained, tech, tehcnology, tech news briefing, technology news, tech news, wsj tech, wsj tech news, wsj meta, metaverse wsj, meta tech news briefing, metaverse tech news briefing, meta tech, metaverse technology, vr, ar, virtual reality, oculus quest, meta quest, meta quest pro, quest pro, wsj, the wall street journal

Id: Fl674chd8fw

Length: 5min 51sec (351 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 17 2022