Blog
Connecting Habbo Hotel to your social circle
This is my first post to the sulake.com blog, and what an exciting topic it is! Just before
Christmas we made it possible to play
Habbo
Hotel inside Facebook, and share the fun with your real-life friends in addition to people
you've met inside Habbo. Today, I'm happy to tell that we've extended this idea further, and now
you can share Habbo with your friends and connections over
Twitter,
Yahoo,
Windows Live,
Hyves and other networks, too.
I want to use this opportunity to explain what you can do with this, and why we think it
makes Habbo more fun. I'm also going to address one concern I've heard repeated since we launched
this feature.
As our loyal players can tell you, Habbo can be a great, fun way of meeting people outside of
the constraints of the real world, and many have made lasting friendships with other people they
might have never otherwise met. Habbo Hotel is also a place where all kinds of activities, mostly
invented by other players, happen every minute. Where else?
The flip side of this freedom created by anonymity is that it's not always easy to find your
real life friends inside Habbo Hotel, and many players may not even realize they're mingling in a
place where people they know are also active. Yet feedback from the Habbo community tells us that
it's best enjoyed with friends and people you know you have common interests with.
Linking the real life and Habbo Hotel together is a way to bridge these things together. By
logging into Habbo Hotel using your social network identity, you make it easier for you and your
friends to come together.
As an added bonus, it's one less password to keep safe.
But what about anonymity? Habbo has always been anonymous, and we've advised our users to
never reveal their real life identity to strangers.
This remains true even today. Your name will not be shown to other players unless you're
already friends with them outside Habbo Hotel, and both of you want to share Habbo Hotel to your
social circles. If you do not want to connect your social network and your Habbo friends together,
you're welcome to continue using Habbo Hotel the way you've done before - and nothing changes for
you.
We are constantly seeking for new ways for our users to maximize their Habbo experiences.
More updates coming soon!
Finland’s leading business media names Habbo Hotel “top of the decade”
Now that we’ve reached the end of the first decade of this millennium (this is controversial
I know!), many news outlets have started to evaluate the tops and flops of the past ten years. As
Habbo Hotel and our company Sulake were founded almost exactly ten years ago and we’ve worked our
way to the top during this time, we are of course expecting to be on many of these lists!
One recent media that did a tops & flops list was
Kauppalehti, the leading business daily in
our home country Finland. Among their Finnish tops for the decade were: the coming of the
Euro currency,
Linux OS, the
internet,
Google,
China,
Marimekko, and of course
Habbo Hotel! The justification for our
spot was the internationalization of the product and huge growth in users, i.e. success in
general.
On the flip side, among the Finnish flops were (just mentioning a few not so local ones):
the IT bubble,
Y2K,
George W. Bush, and the
decline in
alcohol taxation.
Unfortunately the story seems not to be posted online, so can’t link to it here ☹
Habbo.es wins award in Spain
The
Spanish State Secretary of Communications and Information Society is celebrating the 20 years
of the
.es domain. Therefore, 20 websites
have been selected as the
“Best Websites of the
last 20 years”.
Habbo.es was one of the awarded domains and I was
privileged to be the one to pick it up at
FICOD 09, the international fair of
digital content that takes place every year in Madrid.
The more than 4 million unique users that visit Habbo.es each month guaranteed this award.
Security and creativity are essential in our work in order to offer a suitable environment to our
teen audience. But what users in Habbo.es love the most are the different activities and agreements
we reach to turn the Hotel into a dynamic and enjoyable place in which Habbos can chat with their
favorite artists, meet brands or receive prizes.
There are currently 1.1 million registered .es domains. The “Best Websites of the last 20
years” awards take into account the work of private and public companies that promote the
Information Society in Spain. Accessibility, innovation, the number of users and the support for
the Internet development are also some of the points that the judge has valued to select the
following websites from the 100 that were submitted for the nomination:
•
www.habbo.es
•
www.20minutos.es
•
www.aeccjunior.es
•
www.aena.es
•
www.castillalamancha.es
•
www.arsys.es
•
www.cocacola.es
•
www.elmundo.es
•
www.gallinablanca.es
•
www.guggenheim-bilbao.es
•
www.meaztegigolf.es
•
www.serviweb.es
•
www.simyo.es
•
www.vodafone.es
•
www.nestle-tv.es
•
www.nickelodeon.es
•
www.oscarvelazquez.es
•
www.pulevasalud.es
•
www.rtve.es
•
www.seg-social.es