ZEPETO User Numbers & Demographics — Plus Why It’s Called “ZEPETO”

Courtesy the team at Naver, the South Korean company behind ZEPETO, here’s some recent user numbers for the mobile metaverse platform that I compiled for my upcoming book:

• Monthly active users: 15M – 20M.
• User-created items sold on the platform daily: 1.5 million.
• Top markets by usage: China, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, USA, France, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Vietnam. “60% of our users are in Asia, 15% Americas, 15% Europe, and 9% MENA.”

I’m also grateful for getting a (very unexpected) answer to a question that’s been on my mind for over two years: Why even call this thing “ZEPETO”?

“The name ZEPETO was inspired by Geppetto, the grandfather and creator of Pinocchio from the Italian fictional story,” a Naver rep tells me. “Our platform allows users to create a character that resembles themselves and experience a virtual version of themselves.”

Like I said, unexpected! But actually pretty clever. Though it might be somewhat confusing for consumers. (The new Guillermo Del Toro adaptation isn’t a huge hit, and are Kids These Days even familiar with the original Disney classic?)

15-20 million MAU is quite impressive and puts ZEPETO roughly third or fourth in users of metaverse platforms. Also notable that it’s already 2-3x larger than IMVU, another mobile-centric metaverse platform, even without an aggressive push (yet) into the US/EU market.

The image above, by the way, is from a recent video of top worlds on the platform:

Judging by this, platform interactivity is mainly limited to avatar animations and platformer-type games. So Roblox is probably at a greater advantage there. Also its demographics are a bit more diverse than Roblox, age-wise:

[W]hile the cartoon graphics are similar to early ROBLOX, a ZEPETO team member tells me the world’s top content creators tend to be in their 20s and early 30s, often with fashion and architecture backgrounds. The monetization system is already attracting breakout stars like “Lenge”, a ZEPETO fashion creator who used to work as a UI designer in tech, but now earns a reported six figures from her sales of virtual goods that she markets on her YouTube channel.

More here, and see also: Top Second Life Fashion Brand Opens Up A Shop In Zepeto; Truth Hawks Compares & Contrasts The Platforms.