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