The reality in which live today we share with 7,8 billion people as of June 2020. Every day 7,8 billion people open their eyes and experience the world around us. The number of active users of a simulated reality tells us something about how ubiquitous the simulation is. The more active users, the more likely new users are being pulled into the simulated reality and the harder it becomes to stay outside of the simulated reality.
The most pervasive simulated reality that exists today is the Internet. It is so ubiquitous in our daily lives that we often forget we are online. Today more than 4,54 billion users or 59% of the world population access the world wide web and other internet services such as streaming music, video and social media. Of these 4,54 billion users, 4,18 billion are unique mobile users who connect through smartphone, tablet or other mobile device.
The rise of the global Internet has seen a spectacular growth over the last 25 years. In 1989, British scientist Tim Bernes-Lee invented the World Wide Web at CERN in Switzerland to enable information sharing between scientist and universities around the world. In december 1995, there were only 16 million Internet users. Five years later in december 2000, this number had already grown to 361 million users. In 2005 some 1,1 billion users logged into the Internet. And in 2020, the counter is on 4,54 billion users.
Facebook now called Meta, founded by Mark Zuckerberg as the TheFaceBook on February 4, 2004 started with membership that was limited to Harvard students at first but then expaned to other universities and colleges. In September 2006, everyone with a valid email address and age of 13 and older could register []. In the first quarter of 2009, 197 million active users had a Facebook account and this number rose to 2,5 billion users in the fourth quarter of 2019. Today 1 in every 3 people on the planet spends time in the reality created by Facebook.
On March 25, 2014 Meta acquired the VR company Oculus for 2 billion dollar. Facebook views the technology as more than a peripheral for video games. “Immersive virtual and augmented reality will become a part of people’s everyday life,” Zuckerberg said. “History suggests there will be more platforms to come, and whoever builds and defines these,” he said, will shape the future and reap the benefits.[]. Since then the social media platform has created several VR experiences. Facebook Spaces introduced in 2017 allowed users to chat with each other, create VR selfies and make and watch movies together. In 2019, Meta launched Facebook Horizon where users in a VR world can explore, play and create together []. Compared to the number of active users of Internet and mobile social media, VR social media is still very small today and much learning and experimentation seems to be needed still. It is questionable whether people will want their virtual life to be like Nintendo or Disney all the time and how we would interact with live hosts in Facebook Horizon with thousands of dynamic users in action. These and other reasons such as the price of VR headset and lack of appealing VR content slow down the growth of social virtual reality experiences.
Video games come and go in popularity, as of january 2020, the game with the most active monthly players is the free to play, tactical first-person shooter CrossFire for Microsoft Windows with 240 million users, closely followed by online multiplayer battle royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds with 227 million users.
While 240 million active users is very impressive, it is only around 5% of all Internet users and 3% of the total world population. To reach the same level of user adoptation as the Internet, virtual and augmented reality must become more afforable, develop more appealing content and address social interaction and privacy concerns.
