Habbo (also known as Habbo Hotel ) is a social networking website aimed at teenagers. The website is owned and operated by Sulake Corporation The service began in 2000 and has expanded to include 32 online communities (or "hotels"). As of June 2008 over 118 million avatars have been registered. There are an average 8 million unique visitors monthly, and 75,000 avatars are being created every day. The 100 millionth avatar was created on Habbo UK in June 2008.
Habbo's origins are said to be from Mobiles Disco, a 1999 hobby project by creative designer Sampo Karjalainen and technologist Aapo Kyrölä for a Finnish band, a virtual chat room running on Aapo's Fuse technology. After having been contracted to design a virtual game and chat called Lumisota (Snow Wars) for a Finnish ISP, Elisa, they were contracted for another project. They developed Hotelli Kultakala (eng. Hotel Goldfish) with a small team of developers and it was launched in August 2000 on the ISP's web portal.
Aapo and Sampo and Dee Edwards, an entrepreneur from the UK, wanted to create an international business based on the virtual hotel concept and worked on a plan in autumn 2000 and raised finance. By the end January 2001, Habbo Hotel had been launched in beta mode. The new hotel launched officially a few weeks afterwards, aimed at the teenage market, with marketing and payment partners in place, run from a HQ in London. It had a new credits system and community and safety features. The next hotel was launched in Switzerland a few months later, in four languages. It has since been expanded to over 31 countries in five continents, including Hotelli Kultakala in Finland which was made into a Habbo Hotel and has been invested in by venture capitalists.
During the years, Habbo has changed its web design and appearance, the latest change occurred in July 2009.
In May 2006, the service, along with its domain names, were changed from www.habbohotel.com (.co.uk, .com.au, etc) to www.habbo.com (.co.uk, .com.au, etc). In August 2007, Habbo's Chinese community closed down temporarily, the first time a Habbo website has closed. The challenging Chinese market and high operational costs led to the decision of closing the service. Customers in China were redirected to other Habbo communities. In December 2008, Habbo's Russian community announced it was closing in February 2009 as a result of low numbers. Those on the site with " furni " (virtual furniture that can be used to furnish rooms in the hotel that are bought with the use of Habbo Credits or Coins, that can be exchanged for real money given to Sulake) have been told they will receive credit codes for use on the USA Habbo community.
In late May 2009, Habbo opened a new beta version of Habbo for some Habbos to test out before using it officially. In the new version of Habbo, the client uses Flash instead of Shockwave, and the interface of the Hotel is changed.
The website
Many activities and features are available on Habbo's website, that do not appear on the Hotel itself. The community section of the website features regularly updated news and events regarding the service. Recommended chat rooms, popular group pages and user pages and user interest tags are also accessible from the website. The website has seen over five different versions. Over the past three years, the website has become more involved with the hotel. Before 2006 users logged in on the hotel, now they log in via the website, which links them to the hotel. The website provides information on users' credit balance, groups, rooms and even friends. However, the website's main focus is the following two features:
User pages
This is a feature allowing users to customise their own web page displayed on the website, colloquially named Habbo Home . The web page can be accessed from inside the hotel, and allow for user interaction with the home page of the user, as well as interaction within the Hotel. The web pages are displayed with the user's character appearance and motto. Users can customise their web page with a selection of widgets, stickers and backgrounds. Various widgets, stickers and backgrounds can be purchased with credits to add to the small default range of features. There are also opportunities to win more free features and often branded stickers/backgrounds are offered as part of a marketing campaign....
Groups
Groups are special "clubs" that users can join. They have a very similar format to user pages. While users can join groups for free, a 10 credit fee is reguired if a user would like to purchase and run their own groups. It is 10 c )creditz) to purchas these groups Depending on the hotel, there are over 500 groups in a Habbo community. In groups, owners can change the badge (a small image to symbolise the group), customize the page, give/take away admin rights (the ability to change the badge, change the page, kick members out, give/take away other members rights) to members, kick members out of the group, delete/change discission forum threads, or change the group's settings, such as the URL, the group name, group description, and even the ability to make the group exclusive or available to everybody. Admins can do everything above except change the group's settings. Users can join up to 50 groups. Many of the hotel's competitions (such as the monthly Newsie) are featured on groups.
Discussion forums
Within groups, there is a discussion forum, where users can post various threads and topics. To be able to post in these forums, users will need to verify their e-mail address first. Users can post virtually anything they wish. Since many people enjoy spamming the forums, Habbo has included a "security code" system, where users must enter a randomly generated string of characters (eg. jsiqnsp) before their message can be saved, to prevent spam.
Toolbar
Users can also download the Habbo toolbar. The Habbo community toolbar allows users to stay on top of what is happening in Habbo, even when they are not there. Powered by Conduit, the community toolbar lets users see their messages, friends, news, and links to groups.
The Hotel
The virtual Hotel is the chat room of Habbo, and consists of a client made using Adobe Shockwave technologies. The Hotel can be accessed by logged-in users via a popup window on the website. When a user accesses the Hotel they are brought to a screen colloquially known as Hotel View . From this screen, members can contact one another via the Habbo Chat , which acts as the main form of communication throughout all areas of the Hotel, and use the Navigator to navigate their way to a chat room. Originally, communication was conducted through the Habbo Console , which was recently replaced by Habbo Chat and by Habbo Mail , which is accessible via the Habbo Homepage.
Role play
Habbo has long been an online community for roleplayers to act out certain actions and scenarios. Habbo clients around the world have play host to a very large number of organizations that are devoted to roleplaying. There are many based on military forces around the world, such as the US Army. Others are based on gangs and crime organizations(e.g. the Italian Mafia), fantasy and science fiction, such as Star Wars Roleplay. Many Habbo clients around the world have a floor specifically made to cater for organizations devoted to roleplaying. Prior to these roleplay floors, rooms that were specified for role playing were usually placed in one certain floor intended for other types of rooms.
Community
Habbo is home to a wide community of people all around the world. By purchasing virtual furniture with SMS, credit cards, or other means, users can design their own Hotel rooms and create a social space for themselves and their friends.
Navigation
The centre for all navigation within the Hotel is the "Navigator." The Navigator allows users to travel among chat room around the virtual Hotel. As well as being a means of transportation, the Navigator also shows basic information about chat rooms, such as descriptions, current online users, and privacy settings.
Games
Habbo public games have been disabled on beta and "old" habbo until further notice. Habbos can play a variety of games in the hotel. Some are run by Habbo and are fully integrated into the game, while others are created by users and are usually simpler.
BattleBall, SnowStorm, Wobble Squabble, and Diving are all games that are run by Habbo. In BattleBall, players must capture the most amount of squares as possible and color them their team colour. SnowStorm is similar to a skirmish or third-person shooting game; players throw snowballs at each other and gain points each time a snowball hits another player or knocks them down.
Wobble Squabble and Diving can be played in the various pool rooms in Habbo and are unlike BattleBall and SnowStorm in that they are not "team" games. In Wobble Squabble, two players face each other and try to knock each other off "floaties" in a pool by pressing various button combinations to unbalance their opponent. Diving is a single-player game where users can dive while performing tricks in-air; afterwards other users rate their dive.
Also, Habbo's can make their own games in their rooms like, Falling Furni (often abbreviated FF), Cozzie Change, Defend your pod, Don't say yes or no, Don't touch the floor and more.
Chat rooms
There are two types of chat rooms within the virtual hotel. The interface of both chat rooms remains the same, however, the designs portrayed as rooms themselves diff
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