Over 500 Mobile Apps Now Using the Term ‘Metaverse’ to Entice Users

A true “metaverse” may not exist just yet, but that hasn’t stopped marketers and app creators from adopting the buzzword to promote their mobile apps and games on mobile app stores. According to new data shared by Sensor Tower, there are officially 552 apps that include the term “metaverse” in their apps’ titles or descriptions, all in hopes of capturing consumers’ attention in this next evolution of the digital world. And many of these new additions were added in the past few months, the firm states.

Across all global apps ranked on both the Google Play and App Store, a total of 86 apps referenced the “metaverse” in their title or description between November 2021 and January 2022, Sensor Tower’s data indicates.

This timeframe closely follows Facebook’s announcement of its corporate rebrand to “Meta,” and its plans to heavily invest in “metaverse” technology over the coming decade. While Meta never claimed to have already created the metaverse, the word soon began to be used more commonly to describe nearly any immersive virtual environment where people interact with one another as online selves. Startups began to describe themselves as “metaverse companies.” Gaming platform Roblox was proclaimed to be a metaverse frontrunner. Social-crypto platforms–which were really just MMORPGs with a hefty financial component–were also nicknamed metaverses, prompting rushes for metaverse real estate.

It seems as if marketers didn’t care much about the actual technical requirements for the metaverse to exist–like the new industry standards that would have to be built to allow for transformations between interoperable digital words, where all of your connections, friends, and virtual baggage come with you.

After Meta announced its Metaverse efforts on October 28, 2021, the number of apps that mentioned the word “metaverse” grew 66% month-over-month by November. As of the end of November, 29 apps had been updated to include the word, more than double the 11 apps in October.

The new firm also studied which kinds of apps were digging into the metaverse trend. After analyzing, it was found that many of the apps also referenced other popular tech terms alongside “metaverse,” including “NFTs,” “crypto,” “AR,” or “VR,” for example.

Of these, “crypto” was the most commonly used term to be used alongside “metaverse,” with 23 percent of apps (144 apps in total) mentioning the term. “NFTs” was the second-most popular term, showing up in 18% of the studied group, or 118 total applications. The terms “VR” and “AR” were found in 9 percent and 11 percent of the “metaverse” apps, respectively.

Surprisingly, the term “metaverse” was also used across an array of different apps, not just crypto, finance, and gaming apps.

However, mobile gaming publishers led the pack in adopting the keyword, as 107 apps in the Game category now reference the term, or 19% of the apps that were studied. The second-largest category where the term appeared was Finance, accounting for 101 of the “metaverse” termed apps. This was followed by Social (70 apps), Entertainment (57 apps), Books (37 apps), Lifestyle (33 apps), Tools (26 apps), Business (25 apps). Art and Design (13 apps) and Education (11 apps).

The App Bros

Whether or not adding the word “metaverse” to these apps is working to attract users remains unclear, making an app with an exceptional user experience remains key to creating a successful app.

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