IHabbos Habbo Hotel making a run at MySpace, at least in the younger teen market, by taking more of a Cyworld-esque approach? Habbo has recently rolled out user home pages for its users, but only on the Finnish Habbo for now. You can see the page describing the system (in Finnish) at http://www.habbo.fi/home

An example of one of the more developed home pages at this point that I found is here. There’s a translation of the main content area of the page below, but I wanted to comment first.

Habbo seems to be taking a much more controlled approach to home page creation than a MySpace, which makes sense given Habbo’s young audience. There are certain, fairly strictly-defined things to include on the page, but there doesn’t appear to be any ability to go beyond that. I’m sure a lot of peoples’ first reactions to this will be, “Why would someone use this instead of MySpace, which is free and allows kids to express themselves far more freely?” Partly, it’s because Habbo Hotel is already popular and this just ties in with that, but also because Habbo is seen, rightly, as a very responsible game operator by parents in most/all (I can’t confirm all) of the countries it operates in (Habbo makes a big deal of their admins in Canada, for instance, having been vetted by law enforcement), and happy parents can translate into a lot of child users. If I had kids, there is no way they’d be on MySpace until they were at least in their mid-teens, but I’d feel very comfortable allowing an 11 year old to use Habbo.

Further, unlike MySpace, they are charging real money for some of their tools. At first glance, this might seem crazy, but consider that CyWorld does it with immense success in South Korea (yes, I know the US isn’t South Korea, but Habbo is a global product) and that Habbo users are already accustomed to paying for things in a nearly purely social world. I suspect Habbo’s core ‘game’ system (the Habbo Hotel rooms players get and decorate) adds a lot of value to Habbo Home pages for their users as well, because the Home pages exist in an already thriving ecosystem, whereas MySpace pages pretty much have to have value completely in and of themselves (and they do, obviously).

I know Sulake (Habbo’s developer/publisher) is planning to roll this out to other countries, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the English language market when it launches. Most people in the virtual world industry ignore Habbo, because “it’s for kids,” as if that invalidates it in any way. That’s greatly to their detriment, since Habbo has done what it’s done with such immense success. There’s a lot to be learned from Habbo.

Translated (by Heidi Saario. Thanks Heidi!), the Habbo Home middle column reads:

Habbo Home

  • Habbo Home is your own small website on the Habbo website. You can make it look like the way you want.
  • Personalize your site with different tools; stickers, post-it notes, background images and “vimpaimet” (doesn’t appear to have an easy translation).
  • Link your Habbo rooms to your Habbo Home-site or brag about your game score with this cool looking “vimpaimet”.
  • To edit and maintain the site is easy. You can drag the elements around and buying extra tools is effortless.

More detailed instructions:

1. Habbo Home

Click on “Your own Habbo Home” link.

You can edit the look of your own site by clicking on “Edit the site” icon.

You can drag around all the elements on the site with your mouse.

2. List of tools

You can change the look of your site by adding different things: stickers, “vimpains”, background images and post-it notes.

All the tools are in their own directories. By clicking the directory on the page you’ll get the list of the different items and can go through it.

All the tools cost money. However, we’ll provide you with some tools in the beginning to get you started.

3. Post-it notes

You can add post-it notes on your page by clicking “post-it notes”-icon. You will also see the number of notes you have, and you can choose which one you want to use.

Before adding a note to your site, you can preview it. If you want to further edit it, click on “Edit the note”. If not, click “Add”.

Attention! You can’t edit the note once it’s posted to your site. You can only use it once. Once you remove it from your site, it can no longer be used.

4. Stickers

If you want to add a sticker to you site, choose “Stickers”. Choose your sticker from the catalog. You can add it to your site by clicking on a location for it on your site.

To move or change your sticker you need to click the tool icon attached to them. You can also remove the sticker off you site. The stickers are not disposable. The removed stickers will be returned to your catalog of stickers.

5. “Vimpaimet”

“Vimpaimet” are small boxes that have some Habbo info about you. There are four different kinds of “vimpaimet”.

“Friend-vimpain” lists the characters of your friends. “Own rooms-vimpain” has links to your own rooms. “High Score-vimpain” will pick your game scores. “Habbo Club-vimpain” will tell if you are a member of a Habbo Club.

In order to add a “vimpain” on your site, click “Vimpaimet” icon. Edit your “vimpain” or remove it by clicking the tool icon attached to it.

“Vimpaimet” are not disposable. After removing them from your site they will be stored in your “Vimpain” catalog.

6. Background Images

You can add a new background by clicking “Background” icon. Choose the background you want to add to your site.

Background images are not disposable. You can change and use them over and over again. You can always find your Background images in your catalog.