'Habbo Hopes For New Life As A Gaming Platform'

[Michael]

Accidentally clicked news when googling Habbo, came up with lots of articles about this:

After Losing Over Half Its 9M Users In A Pedophile Scandal, Habbo Hotel Hopes For New Life As A Gaming Platform

Habbo Hotel, the under-21 social networking site that had to close down and then “mute” users over the summer after it was discovered that people were using it to send minors illicit content, is opening a new line of business: as a youth-focused online gaming platform.

From today, site owner Sulake is launching a set of APIs for people to publish games that can be distributed on its network. It hopes that the effort will help it pick up significant ground that it has lost in recent months: Habbo says it currently counts 4 million monthly users across 150 countries and 12 languages; before the scandal hit, Habbo Hotel had 9 million monthly visitors.

The target audience, it says, are 13-18 year-olds. Habbo says that it will be marketing to them with a newly positioned games center in its main menu. Games can be promoted for free (for now) and appear to be free, getting monetized through in-app credits and advertising. We’re asking Habbo whether games will follow the conventional 30/70 revenue share split or something else.

To avoid some of the problems of relaxed governance that got Habbo into hot water in the first place, the company is specifically laying out what is not allowed into these games, with the list including “raw violence”, nudity, drugs, racism, bad language, and political and religious content. In contrast with Zynga, which is interested in doing more with gambling to improve the margins on its social games business, Habbo specifically forbids it.

That relaxed governance not only lost Habbo over half its users, but it also meant that one of its key investors, Balderton, also backed out of its relationship with the company.

Habbo already has a track record as a gaming platform, but for games it develops itself. This move opens the platform to significantly more activity from others, and puts Habbo in line with other online gaming contenders like Gree, Zynga and of course the biggest social-network-as-gaming-platform of all, Facebook. Developers that have already signed on include Chat Republic and Seepia, the company says, and that trial usage so far has been encouraging, if perhaps a little empty in its early days.

“We have been thrilled to work with such a great bunch of talented game studios,” Antti Viitanen, Sulake EVP New Revenue, said in a statement. “Habbo offers developers globally a great opportunity to create games for the huge Habbo user base, especially now, when the platform isn’t yet crowded with games.”

If opening to third parties does not take off — or even if it does — Habbo may also find it has a lease of life through anonymized data it collects on the key youth demographic.

Habbo’s API documentation gives some interesting insight into what platforms are the most popular with Habbo’s young users at the moment. The vast majority, over 90%, of users play on Windows machines, with only 6% on Macs, and mobile platforms like iPhone or Android each accounting for 1% or less of usage. About half of all users are accessing Habbo via Google’s Chrome browser. And given that the network is mainly used for conversations and interactions, device usage is just the tip of the data iceberg for the company.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/27/aft...ming-platform/

API Docs released too: https://dev.habbo.com/docs/General/Getting_Started

Closed by Lee (Forum Super Moderator): Due to off topic posts / arguments.

[Nige]

Very interesting, under 21-social networking.. I was unaware of that.

I personally think Habbo has lost it's users for good.

[Catchy]

For god sake, does anybody even want games? I couldn't care less about the crappy games that they keep introducing. Habbo isn't what it used to be and it seems they're really drifting away from what it used to be about, a community!

[Red]

Awful. Habbo is no place for these god awful games. They really don't have a clue.

[xxMATTGxx]

I loved the operating system statistic. But yeah I guess we knew this was happening with the launch of the games centre and then the dev site.

[BreakfastBacon]

Habbo what R you doin'? Habbo Stahp. I miss old habbo way way WAY to many crap changes going on now.

---------- Post added 28-11-2012 at 08:46 PM ----------

I don't think habbo realised no one plays those games.

[Philly]

It's sort of going the way of the dodo bird, eh? They probably need to focus on a different demographic. Farmville for Habbo ain't gonna cut it.

[geo]

More games..... fun! They need to think of better ways to work this out, like maybe making the promotion things free for a start and then bringing back old ways that were popular. Listening to users would be better too.

[Catchy]

More games..... fun! They need to think of better ways to work this out, like maybe making the promotion things free for a start and then bringing back old ways that were popular. Listening to users would be better too.

Once we think they're finally listening to us it goes right back in the opposite direction ffs

[Michael]

The title is ''Habbo Habbo Hopes For New Life As A Gaming Platform'' - they obviously feel Habbo is dead and they need to change, which is why they are going towards gaming.