Habbo

Habbo (previously known as Habbo Hotel) is a social networking service and online community aimed at teenagers. The website is owned and operated by Sulake, a Finnish corporation. The service began in 2000 and has expanded to include nine online communities (or "hotels"), with users in over 150 countries. As of August 2012, over 273 million avatars have been registered with an average 5 million unique visitors monthly. 90% of Habbo's users are between the age of 13 and 18.

The service allows users to create their own Habbo character and design hotel rooms, meet new friends, chat with other players, organize parties, look after virtual pets, create and play games and complete quests.

History

Habbo stemmed from a 1999 hobby project by creative designer Sampo Karjalainen and technologist Aapo Kyrölä entitled Mobiles Disco, for a Finnish band. It was 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 internet service provider, they were contracted for another project. They developed Hotelli Kultakala (eng. Hotel Goldfish) with a small team of developers. It launched in August 2000 on the ISP's web portal.