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| Meta has 300,000 users in Horizon Worlds |
Horizon Worlds, Quest's head-mounted social virtual reality platform, is Meta's most popular bet.
The company recently featured the platform in a Super Bowl ad that Mark Zuckerberg described as central to the company's vision for the Metaverse.
The company's chief product officer, Christopher Cox, gave an update on Horizon Worlds user growth during a virtual meeting earlier this week.
"Since launching Horizon Worlds to all Quest users in the US and Canada in early December, the monthly user base has grown by more than 10 on average," he said.
A company spokesperson confirmed these statistics. That number includes users of Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, a separate app for attending live virtual reality events, which uses the same basic avatars and mechanics, he said.
The number does not include Horizon Workrooms, an invitation-only virtual meeting experience.
Horizon Worlds is in private beta, allowing creators to test their world-building tools, ahead of its December launch.
Similar to how Roblox or Minecraft works, Horizon Worlds allows users to create custom environments to move around and play as an avatar.
And Meta announced this week that it has built 10,000 individual worlds in Horizon Worlds so far. His Facebook group for creators now has over 20,000 members.
The platform has grown ten times in three months
Given that Horizon Worlds has only been in widespread use for a few months, it's still too early to say if the platform will continue to grow rapidly or if the platform will be able to retain users over time.
Social products always have more monthly users than daily users, Cox didn't tell employees.
Quest's revenue growth in the fourth quarter of last year also helped spark interest in the Horizon Worlds experience.
Meta hasn't revealed how many Quest glasses were sold, which makes it difficult to gauge the success of Horizon Worlds on its platform.
But several third-party estimates put Quest's sales at more than 10 million. Zuckerberg recently stated that Meta may release a mobile version of Horizon Worlds later this year. Zuckerberg wants to take his early experiences with the Metaverse to more places outside of virtual reality.
The launch of Horizon Worlds on mobile made it a competitor to Rec Room, a social gaming app with 37 million monthly users across gaming, mobile and virtual reality platforms.
Although Horizon Worlds is not yet profitable for the company, the focus is on its ability to succeed. Especially considering the company's stock price has fallen as investors question what it will cost to break into the Metaverse.
Along with moderating content and underage users in VR, META needs to make Horizon Worlds reliable enough for millions of people to use.
Facebook depends on its future in particular with the trends of virtual reality and the Metaverse. The company changed its name to Meta. It also promises to spend billions of dollars annually on developing hardware and software beyond traditional social media.