Linked List: October 15, 2022

Saturday, 15 October 2022

Sad Numbers for Facebook’s Horizon Worlds 

Jeff Horwitz, Salvador Rodriguez, and Meghan Bobrowsky, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):

Meta initially set a goal of reaching 500,000 monthly active users for Horizon Worlds by the end of this year, but in recent weeks revised that figure to 280,000. The current tally is less than 200,000, the documents show. Most visitors to Horizon generally don’t return to the app after the first month, and the user base has steadily declined since the spring, according to the documents, which include internal memos from employees.

By comparison, Meta’s social-media products, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, together attract more than 3.5 billion average monthly users — a figure equivalent to almost half the world’s population. Horizon is currently reaching less than the population of Sioux Falls, S.D.

Horizon is designed to be a sprawling collection of interactive virtual spaces, or worlds, in which users appearing as avatars can shop, party and work. Yet there are rarely any girls in the Hot Girl Summer Rooftop Pool Party, and in Murder Village there is often no one to kill.

No girls at the Hot Girl Summer Rooftop Pool Party, and no one to murder in Murder Village — that really says it all.

Related: the avatars-with-legs demo Zuckerberg presented last week was fake. I’d say I’m kicking them while they’re down, but kicking requires real legs.

Oklahoma City Apple Store Is Second to Unionize 

Josh Eidelson, reporting for Bloomberg:

As with the Machinists’ victory in Towson, Maryland, the Oklahoma vote could quickly embolden Apple workers who have been privately discussing organizing elsewhere. The fact that the effort prevailed in a deep-red state, whose unionization rate is only around half the US average, underscores the campaign’s potential to spread nationwide.

Patrick Hart, a leader in the Oklahoma City campaign, said he’s now eager to advise other Apple stores on how to organize. “I want this to become a labor movement,” he said. “We’re going to be that catalyst for people.”

With two stores unionizing, Apple will have a tougher time maintaining the status quo, said Epstein Becker & Green attorney Steven Swirsky. “If I lost one, it could concern me,” Swirsky, who advises companies on how to avoid unionization, said prior to the vote. “If you lose more than one, then it starts to become hard to explain away.”

Apple’s retail stores are exceptional, but it’s starting to look like they won’t be exceptions to the resurgence of unionization in the U.S.