Facebook's name change to Meta is an indication of where Mark Zuckerberg wants to invest more: the promises of a metaverse that it will be the nerve center of many of our remote social gatherings. While there is a lot of software and hardware engineering involved in creating these virtual worlds and meeting rooms, they need above all that people want to use them, because if not, they are digital deserts.
Horizon worlds is Meta's proposal to the Metaverse. It is presented as the virtual meeting room of the future, as a possible successor to the constant Zoom calls that for many gave enormous social pressure, and also as a relaxed meeting space. It is active in numerous countries, but is having a hard time getting people to use it, even among Meta's own employees.
Few in meta believe in Horizon Worlds as a metaverse
A recently leaked internal memo suggests that Few company developers are as excited about the Metaverse as Xuckerbergs.. At least, from Mark's vision of a metaverse. Vishal Shah, Vice President of Metaverse at Meta, states in the note that not even the people who develop the flagship metaverse product that the company has changed its name to; you are using it.
In Shah's September 15 memo, he admits that Horizon Worlds "has quality gaps and performance issues"and wants the team to spend the rest of the year in a quality block. According to him, the main problem is that Meta developers aren't using it much. If the people building the metaverse don't want to actively use it, it's unlikely that the more casual consumers, who Horizon Worlds is aimed at, will give it a chance. With developers not actively using it, you do not have enough user experience to know the problems to solve and how to improve it to interest people outside of tech circles.
It's not an isolated issue on Meta. On September 30, Shah posted another memo pointing out specific issues and how he wanted to resolve them. He claims that the onboarding experience is confusing and frustrating for users and that Horizon Worlds has yet to find a "market adjustment«. Although they have a roadmap for hardware, no one knows what kind of experiences will work realistically for consumers. A plan is being developed that "hold managers accountable» for their teams to use Horizon Worlds at least once a week.
