The European Commission has rebuked a slew of inaccurate reports in the mainstream media that wrongly reported low attendance figures for their metaverse.
On November 29, one attendee at the “gala” event, a journalist for Devex, reported that only a handful of people showed up, and a host of mainstream media outlets swiftly parrotted the news without further research.
The only media outlet that appears to have countered that popular narrative is MetaNews, reporting that by December 3 the event was so busy that users were lining up just to get in as waiting times grew in excess of one hour.
Now the EU has responded to the negative publicity with figures of its own, revealing that the eyewitness at the event may have missed the bigger picture.
The EU Commission weighs in
According to the EU on the night of the “gala” the event hosted 300 guests between 8-11pm. Further, there were 128,000 visits to the metaverse between Oct 10 and Nov 30 and 5,450 visits on Nov 29 – surpassing the daily average of 2,510.
While the initial report may accurately recount the experience of one individual, the EU argues that this single experience was grossly misleading. A spokesperson for the event has now set out to correct the record.
“With people being able to move around freely, it would be difficult that a single visitor is able to see the total number of visitors in all the different spaces,” said the spokesperson.
The spokesperson additionally went on to clarify that an error in some marketing materials falsely stated that the event started at 9pm, when in fact it started at 8pm. That meant that some attendees, showed up when the party was just getting finished.
Must do better
Even though the EU metaverse is far from the disaster it has been painted out to be, its organizers are still less than happy.
“In its current state, its user interface is not user-friendly and appealing enough,” the spokesperson told the Telegraph. “It is still performing better than our static, traditional websites and of course, we will learn from the shortcomings.”
That statement broadly echoes the experience of MetaNews on our visit to the metaverse in December. For more information on the EU metaverse, read our full report here.
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