I've been seeing extensive press coverage of the “metaverse”. Someone just paid almost a million dollars for a modest sized parcel of virtual land on Decenraland. So I've been checking out the big names. Here are some concurrent user counts and where to get the current numbers.

• Roblox (1,798,621 now)
• Second LIfe (47,211 now)
• VRchat (16,925 now)
• Decentraland. (201 now.) That's the server status page.
• Sominum Space (31 now.) Click on "Visit popular parcel" to see the busiest parcels and add up the numbers.

• IMVU - no info source found
• Facebook Horizons - no info source found
• Minecraft - no info source found

Roblox is doing really well. Getting less blocky, too; they've been upping their modeling and graphics. Took them a decade to get traction, but steady growth got them up there. Very different from games, where peak users are usually right after launch, and it goes down from there. Roblox had an IPO, and their market cap is now around $49 billion. Billion. The CEO owns more than half the company, too.

Second Life continues to plug along, big, running well, profitable, and ignored.

VRchat is doing OK.

Then there are the losers with good PR. Decentraland really does have only 201 users. Highest I've ever seen is 350. They've been open for 16 months. Selling crypto assets for years. Sotheby's actually opened a branch in Decentraland. But nobody actually goes to Decentraland.

Sominium Space is even worse. Nobody goes there. I logged in. I was asked “Where is everybody?” The graphic content is awful.

The whole crypto metaverse isn't really there.

IMVU doesn't seem to disclose their concurrent user count. They're reasonably big, but not clear how big.

Facebook Horizons - where did they go? It's still running, but they are getting no attention.

Minecraft - huge, but I can't find the stats.

Did I miss anybody with a concurrent user count in 3 digits or better?

Are they really trying to be the metaverse though, or trying to be their own closed garden with a license to print money?

A proper metaverse would be an open standard. like HTTP and HTML was for the world wide web - where people could author and host their VR spaces independently, with connections between them.

Oops, accidentally posted that in Careers, apparently. Meant to post it in Business.

More hype:

• "The Metaverse ETF will let you invest in stocks that are the internet’s future"
• “‘Walking Dead’ NFTs to Roam the Metaverse”
• "Outlier Ventures Launches Filecoin Base Camp to Accelerate the Next Generation of Startups in the Open Metaverse"
• “NFT Oasis Raises $4.4 Million in Financing and Opens a Bridge to the Metaverse Enabling Creators to Reach the Masses Using Virtual Reality”
• “CryptoKickers Is Bringing NFT Sneakers to the Hypebeasts of the Metaverse”

These are all in the last 2 days. All in mainstream media.

WTF? I thought the NFT thing had crashed already.

I feel some kind of laundry business going on…

And now, Zuckerberg wants to try to do a Metaverse. Again. After Facebook Spaces and Facebook Horizons.

What he seems to have in mind this time is something involving AR goggles. Imagine everyone logged into Facebook all the time.

Nagle said:
What he seems to have in mind this time is something involving AR goggles. Imagine everyone logged into Facebook all the time.

Too late. AR maybe is hip some time, but fb is old boys club already now.
Some other dude will put virtual ads on everything.

New article on GamesIndustry.biz today: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-08-20-what-is-the-metaverse-and-why-is-it-worth-so-much-money​

“So far, there seems to be a lack of consensus on what the metaverse could actually be, but investors seem to agree there's big money in it.” Right.

There's a huge disconnect between what people are talking about and what's actually running. Facebook makes a lot of metaverse noise, but what they're shipping is another meeting-room program. (With really good spatial audio. Audio seems to be the big product differentiator for meeting systems.) Robox makes a lot of noise, but what they really have is a nice mini-game platform for kids. Epic makes a lot of noise, but what they really have is a very popular battle royale game with some social add-ons. The systems that are trying for full-on Ready Player One remain kind of niche - Dual Universe, VRChat, Second Life, Improbable. Whether they're stuck in that niche due to technical limits or fun limits is a good question.

There's also the AR line of development, Google Glass → Pokemon Go → Hyperreality → some kind of always-on Facebook/Google Goggles. The AR people want to compete with cell phones, and have to get the hardware size, weight, power consumption, and cost down. They also have to figure out how the user controls the thing. And how many ads they will tolerate.

That's sort of where we are right now.

Nagle said:
That's sort of where we are right now.

And where do we want to go? And why?

Thanks to the linked article i know now what ‘Metaverse’ means. It's pretty much what i had expected.
Ofc. i've thought about this idea too, like most of us, probably since our childhood.
It's the promise of a virtual computer world to our liking, later mixed with the other ideas of making money when growing up.
Personally i name it ‘The final game’. It's final, because people can make their own content inside / for the game, so no more need for other games.
If we ever get this, there is an obvious winner, explaining why people invest.

But that's surely not what we want. Risk of not being the one and only winner is too high :D And it's monopoly, etc.
So the other option would be some open standard. Like html for reality simulation. With competing but compatible implementations.
How much better is that? Probably the standard is not what everyone wants, and it will evolve slowly, but never be right.

I don't know. Is it an opportunity for good things? Like uniting the world? Tearing down cultural walls? Better than the internet can do?
Or is it more a treat than a dream, about being sheep in a cloud. Living a life of wasting time, confused from ads and echo chambers.

I mean, in some games i often feel like having to work. Collect 10 magic flowers to proceed. Mixing reality and games may follow this practice to someones profit.
I can only imagine a meaningful metaverse if it rises from the people, some kind of cool underground maybe.
But whenever some rich guys put the word in their mouth, i prepare to run, not to plug in.