Habbo Hotel

We met with a couple of people from Habbo Hotel earlier this week. If you're not familiar with Habbo, it's a less famous, more commercially successful, teen version of Second Life. Fans (roughly 80% of which are between 13 and 16) create a Habbo representation of themselves and navigate around different Shockwave screens. Lego-like Habbos can instant message each other (but can't share email addresses or phone numbers) and play games together.



The genius of the platform is micropayments. Users (apparently willingly) exchange Habbo credits for accessories within the game or in order to participate in games. The credits are small - about 8.5 pence in the UK - but they add up if the user numbers are large enough.

The Habbo business model is founded almost entirely on these micropayments. They are, however, starting to reach audiences that are large enough, in some instances, to justify advertising. We've run some interesting activity with them in Sweden for Puma and in the UK for the NSPCC. I expect there will be more in the future.

The highlight of my first visit to the Hotel was this exchange:

Habbo 1: >.>
Habbo 2: lol
Habbo 1: >.>
Habbo 2: lol

Sony Home - "Everything Second Life should be..."

Two reps from Sony Home Entertainment came into the agency yesterday to present Sony Home - the virtual meeting place for PlayStation3 which is currently in beta.

I managed to miss the meeting but have caught up with a couple of guys who attended and who were very impressed. The video below is highly recommended to give you a feel for what it will offer.



The demo, apparently, lived up to expectations set by this video. The presenters, for instance, took a picture with his mobile phone and bluetoothed it into a picture frame within his virtual home without any of those awkward silences that usual accompany presentations gaps due to technical demands.

Sony Home is unlikely to capture the global imagination like Second Life has, nor is likely to be able to brag about millions of users. Access will necessarily be restricted to PS3 users, whose numbers are still relatively small compared to the internet universe. The graphics and 'gameplay', however, were apparently beautiful and smooth. It will be signficantly more structured and user friendly than Second Life and the useability is likely to benefit substantially as a result.

It looks like a lot of fun, though to my mind the jury's still out on whether the fun will be sustained across multiple visits or whether it is a novelty world. Second Life has two major weaknesses - poor useability and being kind of pointless. The relative structure of Sony Home should answer the first downfall and go part of the way towards answering the second. It should, too, be sufficiently transparent and user-friendly that advertisers will get involved. Cunning advertisers (including, possibly, some of our clients) should be in a position to add value to the experience.

I'd love to hear the views of those who've seen it in action...

Mobile Codes News

A fellow mobile enthusiast has pointed out that the Mobile Codes Consortium has recently annouced some new members. The addition of Nokia and O2 particularly give additional credibility to the group. This could be a big step forward for the technology.

The Mobile Codes Consortium is advocating creating standards for a technology for mobile phone barcodes that would allow for broad adoption. Mobile barcodes are a superior alternative to SMS shortcodes and could be major step in the development of the mobile web and an internet of things .