Behind the rise of “cozy” games that encourage players to take their time in open worlds devoid of competition and went from niche to video game fixture in 2022 (Makena Kelly/The Verge)

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 …

Makena Kelly / The Verge:
TikTok expands its political content rules to limit fundraising by politicians and political groups, ahead of a full ban on fundraising  —  Starting Wednesday, TikTok is expanding its elections rules to make it harder for politicians and political groups to fundraise using the platform — and plans to ban all fundraising activity soon.

Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Source: Parler has around 50,000 DAUs and its parent company had been trying over the last few weeks to sell the social network at a “wildly inflated” price  —  On Monday, Kanye West, now legally known as Ye, announced that he would buy Parler, an alternative social media platform …

Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
A look at life in Meta’s VR-based social network Horizon Worlds, interacting with early adopters including preteens, parents, insomniacs, and aspiring comedians  —  Every hour of the day and night with the gamers, parents, insomniacs, preteens and aspiring comedians who are the earliest adopters …

Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Parler restructures as Parlement Technologies after raising a $16M Series B and acquires Dynascale to offer “uncancelable” cloud services for online businesses  —  On Friday, Parler announced that it was entering the internet infrastructure industry in order to provide new …