Facebook removes its brand from its in-development social VR platform Facebook Horizon, renaming it as Horizon Worlds, and announces a $10M Creator Fund
Horizon began as Facebook’s planned replacement for Facebook Spaces and Oculus Rooms, then reached an invite-only beta marked by privacy and safety questions. The new name separates the social-VR destination from Facebook’s consumer brand as it moves toward a creator-led model.
The $10M fund follows Facebook’s earlier decision to shift VR investment toward content made by outside partners rather than operate its own VR film studio. Horizon Worlds makes that approach a continuing marketplace strategy rather than a project-by-project content bet.
First-order effects
Horizon creators gain a dedicated $10M funding pool, while Facebook must use the renamed Horizon Worlds identity to attract the experiences that make its social-VR platform useful.
The removal of “Facebook” from the product name makes Horizon Worlds the primary consumer-facing brand for a platform first introduced as Facebook Horizon.
Second-order effects
Independent VR developers have a new reason to prioritize Horizon Worlds, increasing pressure on Facebook to turn creator funding into durable tools, distribution, and audience growth.
Facebook’s shift toward external creators extends the model behind its earlier VR content funding, directing more of its VR-content strategy through incentives rather than wholly owned production.
Third-order effects
If creator funding becomes the recurring way Horizon Worlds is populated, social VR competition will increasingly hinge on platform economics and creator ecosystems rather than on a company’s internally produced experiences.
A standalone Horizon Worlds brand can make governance and safety a platform-level concern, especially given the earlier beta’s reported privacy and safety issues, rather than merely a feature of Facebook’s existing social network.
The trend: Social-VR platforms are evolving from company-branded experiments into creator-dependent destinations whose differentiation rests on content supply and platform governance.
You know you're dogshit when you can't afford to have your company name on your new flagship product because it will turn people off. https://twitter.com/...
@LukeCres7 Yeah, $10 Million is nothing. Average cash comp for a Facebook engineer is ~ $250K. So it's like outsourcing the build out of a platform to 40 people. And if FB could monetize in-experience purchases on Worlds others have built, if those Worlds are successful... 🤑
Done with just talking It's time to make a stand to Facebook's perverted interpretation of the Metaverse i.e. Horizon We cannot let Facebook win the Metaverse. It's time to build the decentralized social layer of Web3. Build it with me! 1/ Thread on how I got here👇 https://twitte…
Facebook just announced a $10 Million VR Creator fund for Horizon Worlds. That's ~ 3x Snap's AR Creator fund. Only one of those two platforms generates 200+ Million daily average users. Can you guess which one???
@XRandrew Need to dig into Horizon more but wonder if activities are monetizable like Roblox. At least Horizon is built on Unity so there's massive market for talent there. Can't help but think $10M is super insignificant (def makes Snap's payout a real head scratcher).
So exciting to see what creators are already doing on @HorizonWorlds. We are launching a $10 million Creator Fund to encourage even more imagination and creativity in this new space. 👉🏽 for more deets: https://ocul.us/... https://twitter.com/...
An astute move for Facebook and hair about any legacy brand that is trying to establish a new space. Horizon World should be a separate company to be of any deep significance. https://twitter.com/...
Every metaverse attempt needs great tools for creators. It's a new medium, it can't be built with the existing tools designed for stand-alone apps. But crucially creators must own their work. Creators won't partake if their efforts are just charity to a mega-corp. https://twitter…
Worth noting I had an interview with Facebook folks scheduled in “Horizon Workrooms” right after my tour of “Horizon Worlds” and I couldn't figure out which account to use to access the meeting. I ended up joining on audio-chat only with my desktop PC. https://twitter.com/...
Facebook putting $10M into a creator fund for their main metaverse platform when Zuckerberg has said that his near-trillion dollar company is going to broadly become a metaverse company seems like not that much money at all? https://uploadvr.com/...
There are some creators in Rec Room making really great money for creating content I'm not sure how this will go, but VR creator economies are here to stay. https://twitter.com/...
“We fully expect ticketed events, we fully expect people to be asking for gifting of goods, trading of goods, buying digital goods and items, as well as of course experiences themselves, so subscriptions inside of these experiences themselves,” said @pucknorris. https://twitter.c…