Habbo Hotel Microtransacts itself to $30m in Revenue
Michael Arrington
21 comments »
Habbo Hotel, a Helsinki, Finland virtual world/social network startup, announced a 6 million Euro round of financing today (parent company is Sulake) from Movida Group (a joint venture by SoftBank BB Corp. and Asian Groove). Previous investors include Taivas Group, 3i Group plc, Elisa Group and Benchmark Capital. This most recent round was a “substantial valuation increase” from the previous round, according to an insider.
The site features rudimentary graphics, and appeals to a very young demographic. The basic idea is a user registers and is given a “room” in the hotel. They can purchase decorations for the room (chairs, etc.) for very small fees in the range of $0.20 per item. Other users visit them in their rooms and chat. All of these small transaction fees add up - Habbo Hotel had $30 million in revenue last year.
53 million Habbo characters have been created and close to 7 million unique users worldwide visit Habbo each month (source: Nielsen Netratings, June 2006). The service is available in 18 countries.
These revenue numbers are nothing compared to what the huge MMOG’s like World of Warcraft are doing. But they aren’t trivial, either. As they evolve, becoming faster, more reactive and more interesting, they will attract a larger audience. Look for Hive7 to do interesting things in this space, too.
More on Habbo Hotel here from MobileCrunch.
i just cannot believe this 3d virtual world thing. who in their right mind would spend time playing around with avatars? AND THEY SPEND REAL MONEY to make the lives of their avatars better? what has the world come to?
fireIsiah:
Same with cyworld.com, a korean social networking website that makes great money doing similar things like habbo. It’s a whole different culture in Europe and Asia and while revenue via avatar sales, etc might work over there, the same concept has not really caught on in the U.S yet. Cyworld is expanding and I hear they will be launching in the US (http://us.cyworld.com/) very soon. We will see if it catches on.
Yep, I forgot about cyworld. Looking forward to the US launch.
Great service Habbo is, I was in and out of it for a few months maybe 2-3 years ago, glad to see it’s still doing extremely well.
I think Habbo Hotel needs to be given more credit. They’re one of the only social networks / community sites out there that make serious money.
But if you’re making $30 mil in revenues, why raise $6 mil?
Why raise 6M€? I suppose (according to what’s been said in the Finnish press) this funding is specifically meant to strengthen their presence in the Japanese and Asian market. To that end, the investment brings in not only the money but the expertise of the Japanese investors as well. Developing Habbo Mobile was also one of the aims, and I would see the two goals connected: launching these kinds of services is easier in Japan than in Europe, to put it in a simplified way, the target demographic in Japan has the kind of mobile equipment that’s needed for using these kinds of services.
I’m also pleasantly surprised habbo is still around, I last logged on in 2001.
Wow…you pro habbo people can’t be serious. I could give a hot s*** how much money that website makes, it is quite possibly the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard of. I strongly suggest (and by that I mean I demand) that all habbo users quit being huge jerk-offs and find a real hobby. Virtual hotel hobnobbing??? Purchasing animated room decorations??? Un-fuckin believable. Habbo’s success only confirms to me that there are 53 million douchebags worldwide that I would like to avoid like a bad case of the herp. I’m out like habbo will be in 6 months.
Wow…you pro habbo people can’t be serious. I could give a hot s*** how much money that website makes, it is quite possibly the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard of. I strongly suggest (and by that I mean I demand) that all habbo users quit being huge jerk-offs and find a real hobby. Virtual hotel hobnobbing??? Purchasing animated room decorations??? Un-fuckin believable. Habbo’s success only confirms to me that there are 53 million douchebags worldwide that I would like to avoid like a bad case of the herp. I’m out like habbo will be in 6 months.
Good system! I was in and out of it for a few months maybe 2-3 years ago, glad to see it’s still doing extremely well.
Habbo is a scam to get children to spend real money on virtual furni. The end.
Habbo is a really bad place for teens like under the age of 13. I am 13 and i don’t even go on habbo man it is so sick! On guy asked if I had a web cam. I said yes. He said will u give me ur email? I said why do u want it? He said iyo show u stuff. I said stuff like what? He said I want u to show me ur boobs or ur pussy i left habbo and never got on it again! So the people that monit