Habbo Hotel, or “Habbo” for sort, has been around for several years. It boasts over 15 million active players from all over the world. It is growing fast in the United States among 12-17 year olds. And I had never heard of it until about 30 days ago.
Now I’m wondering if the Colts (and the NFL) ought to form a partnership with Habbo to develop online programs for teenagers. Cleary this Habbo environment is way cooler that the typical “kids clubs” offered by sports teams. A partnership with Habbo could give us a boost of hipness with this younger crowd.
BTW, NFL research documents that kids first become aware and interested in NFL right around 12 years old. Boys can be a bit younger, girls a bit older, but this demo is important to the league. Sites like Habbo might be able to help us stay in tune with the media preferences of our current youth and future fan base.
Anyway…
I was lucky enough to meet an executive from Habbo when I went to the South by Southwest conference in Austin earlier this month. And we’ve stayed in touch. The more we talk about it the more synergy we see between our worlds.
So I got me a Habbo. And here it is!
You’ll notice I’ve designed my avatar to look JUST like my real self, complete with dread-cap, mutton chops and Birkenstocks.
Anyway, what’s interesting to me is that Habbo has already captured the imagination (and the money for that matter) of a large swath of teenagers. Even as I type this post, there are over 1,300 “habbos” busily making buying and selling furniture, arranging rooms, creating new stuff, chatting, showing off their “badges”, etc. And they’re doing it in dozens of languages.
Once you enter the world and design your “Habbo” you can venture into rooms. The first room is called the “Welcome Room” where you can poke around and chat with other newbies. Occassionally and “expert” will come along to strike up a conversation and try to show you the ropes.
Here’s a shot of the welcome lounge:
You can see my Habbo on the lower right. I haven’t entered the room yet.
Once you get the hang of it, you can pick all kinds of places to go.
Here’s a shot of the rooms menu:
Some pundits are predicting that MySpace won’t always rule the roost (for youth and teen social nets) because other sites will come along and capture kids’ attention in new ways, before they get hooked on MySpace. Habbo is a good example of such a site.
Regardless, my opinion is that we should make as many connections with popular networks as we can. We should have a presence inside any and all of them. Happily, Habbo is open to working with the Colts to test out a few things. I have to make sure I don’t violate any of our NFL trademark rules here, but watch this blog in the future and I’ll report on what we’re trying and how it’s working.
Count us in…would love to help.