A look at life in Meta’s VR-based social network Horizon Worlds, interacting with early adopters including preteens, parents, insomniacs, and aspiring comedians (Kashmir Hill/New York Times)

Wall Street Journal:
Internal Meta docs detail its metaverse struggles; Horizon Worlds has ~200K MAUs vs. a goal of 500K by end of 2022; 9% of worlds are ever visited by 50+ people  —  Most visitors to Horizon Worlds generally don’t return after first month; ‘an empty world is a sad world’

Alex Heath / The Verge:
In an internal memo, Meta’s VP of Metaverse said Horizon Worlds is suffering from too many quality issues and even the team building it isn’t using it very much  —  Meta’s VR social network Horizon Worlds — the company’s flagship “metaverse” app — is suffering from too many quality issues …

Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon increases its average starting pay for front-line US staff to $19+/hour, up from $18/hour; warehouse and delivery workers will earn $16/hour to $26/hour  —  – Amazon is bumping its average starting pay for warehouse and delivery workers to more than $19 an hour, up from $18 an hour, the company said Wednesday.

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta announces Horizon Worlds avatars are getting legs using an AI model to predict the body’s position, an avatar store, avatars are coming to Reels, and more  —  Meta’s Horizon avatars will be getting legs.  So far, the company’s avatars have weirdly just hovered off the ground …

Brian Feldman / Bloomberg:
Gamers, who have embraced pay-to-play models and paid digital goods, have largely succeeded in rejecting the video game industry’s efforts to incorporate NFTs  —  Nick Kaman’s video game development studio, Aggro Crab, has tied its image closely to making fun of cryptocurrency.

Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
A look at The Follower, an art project using open-source facial recognition software to match Instagram photos with EarthCam video footage of people taking them  —  A tech-savvy artist unearthed video footage of people working hard to capture the perfect shot for Instagram.