Although the "Metaverse" does not exist at this stage, this has not stopped developers from using the term to promote their apps and games. According to new data shared today by Sensor Tower, 552 mobile apps now include the term "Metaverse" in their app's title or description, hoping to drum up consumer interest in what's next for the web.
A total of 86 apps among all global apps ranked on the App Store and Google Play between November 2021 and January 2022 added references to the "Metaverse" in their titles or descriptions. This was around the time that Facebook announced it was rebranding its company to "Meta" and planned to invest heavily in "Metaverse" technology over the next decade.
While Meta never claimed to have built the metaverse, the term soon began to be used more casually to describe almost any immersive online environment in which people interact with each other as virtual selves. Startups began to describe themselves as Metaverse companies, gaming platform Roblox was touted as the frontrunner of the Metaverse, and MMORPGs with heavy financial components began calling themselves Metaverses, even triggering a scramble for Metaspace real estate.
After Facebook announced its Metaverse efforts on October 28, the number of apps mentioning the term "Metaverse" grew 66% month over month through November. By the end of November, 29 apps had been updated to include the word, more than double the 11 apps in October.
Sensor Tower The company also analyzed what types of apps are catering to Metaverse trends. It found that many apps were using the term "Metaverse" alongside other popular tech terms - for example, "cryptocurrencies," "NFTs," "AR" or "VR."
The word most often paired with "Metaverse" is "cryptocurrency", with 23% (144) of the apps mentioning this term. This is not surprising. Because today's Web 3 crypto community relies heavily on hype, and calling something a "metaverse" when it doesn't even exist is the definition of hype. “NFT” was the second most popular term, appearing in 18% of the study group, or 118 apps. The words “AR” and “VR” appear 11% and 9% of the time, respectively.
Surprisingly, the term “Metaverse” is also widely used in a variety of applications, not just games and cryptocurrency financial applications. However, mobile game publishers lead the adoption of this keyword, as 107 apps in the games category now reference the term, accounting for 19% of the apps studied. The second largest category in which the word appears is finance, which accounts for 101 of the "metaspace" apps. Followed by social networking (70 applications), entertainment (57 applications), books (37 applications), lifestyle (33 applications), tools (26 applications), and business (25 applications). Art and Design (13 apps) and Education (11 apps).
