That's the wrong question.
The right question is "how many FB users would accept a free headset that advertisers paid for in exchange for access to your data and exclusive rights to place ads in front of you?"
The social dynamics are completely different. Second Life showed that very clearly.
The three biggest things in Second Life were fantasy consumerism, fantasy entrepreneurship, and fantasy sex.
Unless FB is getting into those markets it's going to find the metaverse a tough sell.
Not least because the whole point of fantasy is that it's not really you. So that immediately conflicts with FB's only-real-identities dogma.
I feel like we’re all hoping that there will be a VR version of the early web, free and open, and mostly just neat things to connect with or about. I worry there is increasingly no chance of that.
On the other hand, oculus is state of the art in virtual reality. I don't know if any other hardware or ecosystem as well developed as theirs is.
Maybe a vocal minority like us HN-folk, but I don't think that by ourselves we really matter in terms of numbers.
It was like the Matrix scene where Neo was learning, then leaves the simulation and says "I know Kung Fu".
She used computers for social media and looking up recipes, so not very savvy at all. I don't think there's a correlation between interest in VR and technicality. Maybe between _vocal_ interest in VR and technicality.