According to reports, one of the numerous ideas articulated in an internal Meta document related to the company's main customer-serving metaverse, a virtual place it calls Horizon Worlds, is 'An empty world is a tragic world.'

According to internal documents and staff letters, Horizon Worlds is not drawing in the number of visitors Meta had planned for, and those visitors who do show up typically leave after the first month, according to a Saturday article in The Wall Street Journal. 

Customers can don one of the company's Quest virtual reality headsets to explore virtual spaces like a comedy club or a live performance venue as avatars using Facebook Guardian Meta's social VR platform. Additionally, customers have the option of creating their own virtual worlds. The app was debuted by Meta in 2019 and released to the public by the end of 2021.

One of the fundamental tenets of Meta's enormous bet is that the metaverse, a larger virtual space, would revolutionise computing and replace both the social networks of today and online meeting tools like Zoom.“We consider that the following computing platform has the potential to be extra social, extra human than something that is come earlier than,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned during a meeting. Meta first set a goal of hitting 500,000 month-to-month lively customers of Horizon Worlds by the top of this yr, later revising the purpose to 280,000. 

Various information from the inside documents, according to the Journal: Since that spring, Horizon Worlds' customer base has been progressively shrinking.

Customers have complained that they can't find worlds they like or new people to hang out with, and that the avatars' appearances are unappealing. They also stated how some other users act negatively.

Only 9% of the worlds that creators create are ever visited by at least 50 users, while the majority are never visited. The phrase 'empty world is a sorrowful world' is seen in one of the documents, and it alludes to Meta's efforts to guide users to locations in Horizon Worlds where they can interact with others, according to the Journal.

Only 9% of the worlds that creators create are ever visited by at least 50 users, while the majority are never visited. The phrase 'empty world is a sorrowful world' is seen in one of the documents, and it alludes to Meta's efforts to guide users to locations in Horizon Worlds where they can interact with others, according to the Journal.

In each of the last three years, retention fees for the Quest VR headset—that is, fees for homeowners who keep using the device—have decreased. According to unnamed sources familiar with the facts cited in the Journal, more than half the Quest headsets aren't in use six months after purchase.

When asked about the Journal's report on Saturday, Meta did not immediately respond. A company spokeswoman told the publication that Meta is working on improvements to Horizon Worlds, including changes intended to keep users safe. The representative added that Meta still believes the metaverse is the future of computing and that their efforts in this area have always been intended to be a multiyear project.