http://www.sulake.com/ Sulake Corporation Oy en Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT Copyright 2007, Sulake Corporation Oy Sulake blog RSS /blog/entries/2008-07-22-Some_blogging_about_blogging.html Tue, 22 July 2008 03:02:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2008-07-22-Some_blogging_about_blogging.html Lately there has been quite a lot of talk about blogs being "so last year" in several different places around the Internet. However, this is not the case in Finland. In IRC-Galleria, the most active social networking site in the Nordic countries, blogging has grown significantly during the last six months. Currently the users of the site post on their blogs over a million times in total every month!

In the beginning of summer 2008 a new feature was introduced in IRC-Galleria: now the users can tag their blog entries to be a part of one of the over half a million communities on the site. While this may sound like a rather simple thing, it is in fact quite revolutionary. In the long run, the blog tagging feature will make every community on the site an information resource created by the users. And since there's a community regarding practically every subject you can imagine, this is something that really doesn't exist in any other social networking site.

Top 5 subjects during the first month of blog tagging:

1. Midsummer
2. Love
3. Festivals
4. The European Soccer Championship
5. Humour

]]> /blog/entries/2008-05-30-GHYS_Television_is_still_a_hit_with_teens.html Fri, 30 May 2008 04:00:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2008-05-30-GHYS_Television_is_still_a_hit_with_teens.html The Global Habbo Youth Survey has delivered us an extensive amount of intriguing insights into the lives of teenagers today – as you may have learned from our earlier blog posts dealing with the various topics of the survey. This is the fourth peek we provide to the findings, in the previous ones we have covered teenager’s mobile usage habits, shared views on youth’s number one interest area music, and explained their game console preferences across different countries. This last one is about teenagers’ media consumption habits.

Our global survey revealed that TV consumption maintains its relevance amongst teens. However, Internet is still the number one media to nearly all of the respondents.

For the study, Habbo surveyed 58,486 teens between the ages 11 and 18 from 31 countries. The results show that 75 percent of all respondents say TV is an important medium for them – six percentage points up on from the 2006 study.  Interestingly, the importance of magazines and radio drops two and six percentage points to 49 percent and 41 percent respectively.  Newspapers stay static with 37 percent of teens claiming their importance. The relevance of TV is especially high in the Latin American, Southern European and Asian countries where over 80 percent of respondents say it’s important to them.
 
When looking at the most popular TV content, teen tastes are very similar all over the world. Amongst both boys and girls the overall favourite TV show is The Simpsons, which was also the clear favourite in 2006. Globally, cartoons and animes such as Family Guy, South Park and Naruto are more popular among boys, whereas girls enjoy watching sitcoms and drama series like Hannah Montana, Friends and Desperate Housewives.

When looking at the gender differences the survey reveals that girls read more magazines whereas boys are slightly more interested in reading newspapers. The findings also imply that newspaper publishers may be heading for difficulties in the future, unless they find more ways to connect with the young Internet generation. Overall, respondents viewed newspapers as the least important medium with 25 percent stating them to be not important at all.

Considering that teen media usage is dominated by having access to desirable content when and where they want it, it was surprising to see that TV is still considered so important for teens, and in many countries it’s on the rise. This is expected because a lot of quality content is still generated for television and digital video recorders such as TiVo and Sky+ allow teens to fit the programmes they want to watch into their busy schedules.

It’s clear from the survey that the way teens consume media shouldn’t be taken for granted and there are no hard and fast rules aside from perhaps that teens appear to value on demand services. Although Internet still remains the most important medium, it is also used as a channel to access content from TV and other more traditional media. However, the survey results reveal teens still greatly appreciate their TV screen and it should not be ignored when trying to connect with them.

A report of the Global Habbo Youth Survey 2008 is available to buy as a hard copy book of 250 pages.  For inquiries and orders, please visit the Sulake Webstore.

Check also the announcement press release.

About the research
The research was conducted within the virtual world, Habbo, and the total amount of respondents (after data cleaning) was 58, 486. The research was conducted between October and November 2007. 31 countries were surveyed and statistical weighting was employed to give all participating countries an equal weight in the global results. Research is available on request.]]> /blog/entries/2008-05-16-GHYS_Teen_audience_won_over_by_PlayStation_.html Fri, 16 May 2008 10:46:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2008-05-16-GHYS_Teen_audience_won_over_by_PlayStation_.html To us at Sulake the recent news about Sony’s PS3 console overtaking Microsoft’s Xbox in European sales did not come as a surprise. According to our recent Habbo Global Youth Survey, PS3 was clearly more popular that Xbox in most of the countries studied.

58,486 teens between the ages of 11 and 18 took part in the global survey across 31 markets. From the respondents, 69 percent refer to the PS3 console as “great” or “good”.  This was followed closely by the Nintendo Wii at 64 percent and Xbox 360 with 58 percent.

The PS3 beats Wii in every age group except the 11 to 12 year olds. However, the Wii is more popular amongst girls up to 16 year olds, and is the favoured female choice overall.  The results also show that whilst the Xbox 360 is less popular in Europe and Asia, its popularity in the Americas fares much better: it is the most popular console in Mexico and Colombia and takes second place in the US, Canada, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

The results of this survey are interesting as it gives us an insight into which brands these teens aspire to as the level of ownership does not correspond to the consoles’ popularity. By order of ownership, the Wii leads, followed by the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Of the teens surveyed, 24 percent own a Wii, with 21 percent and 23 percent owning a PS3 and Xbox 360 respectively. The results do suggest significant growth potential, with each of these consoles there is another 20% planning on buying one of these consoles in the next 12 months.  The Wii and PS3 have the most sales potential: the amount of respondents that are interested in buying them is 4 to 5 percentage points higher than for the Xbox 360.

As Sony and Xbox strive to broaden their console’s appeal, from hardcore to casual gamer, the results of the survey seem to indicate that gender, not previous gaming experience, determines console choice.  Regardless of their level of interest towards gaming boys prefer the PS3 and girls prefer the Wii.

A report of the Global Habbo Youth Survey 2008 is available to buy as a hard copy book of 250 pages.  For more information and orders, please go to the Sulake webstore.]]> /blog/entries/2008-04-29-GHYS-Music.html Tue, 29 April 2008 02:33:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2008-04-29-GHYS-Music.html Global Youth Survey conducted by Habbo revealed that music is the number one interest for today’s teens, forming a key element of their social identity. Pop music is shown to still have a strong presence amongst teenagers, with 67 per cent expressing a like for the genre. Rock, electronic music and hip hop also fare well on a global basis with 64 percent, 56 percent and 49 percent respectively, showing the styles that have the most influence amongst today’s young music consumers.  

For the study, Habbo surveyed 58,486 teens between the ages 11 and 18 from 31 countries. The results offer great insight into how music taste is linked to identity and interests. Music, along with clothing and appearance, is one of the main ways of expressing identity to others, both connecting and dividing today’s younger generations through the sub-cultures associated with different genres. This is reflected by the three highly distinctive bands that emerge as most popular on a global scale: Fall Out Boy, Linkin Park and Tokio Hotel.  

Statistical analysis from the results reflects traditional stereotypes to a certain degree but there are also some surprising findings. For example hip hop listeners are more likely to have an interest in more traditional sports such as football and basketball, whereas extreme sports are associated with an interest in rock. Cooking is rated highly by those with an interest in girl and boy bands; however it is shunned by the rockers who are at the complete opposite end of the scale. Those that love pop music also love the glitz and glamour of showbiz and celebrities but the small percentage that like jazz take an interest in more highbrow pastimes.  The worldwide figures also show a high level of variation in musical tastes, with no specific genre dominating the results.

The survey shows that music continues to be one of the most influential forms of entertainment. This is the main reason why teenagers are such active music consumers and are very opinionated about the artists they follow. Music helps them to identify with one another, and form groups of like-minded people that shape and support their identity creation process.

Further information and to place an order for the 250 page research report, please visit the Sulake webstore.

Check out also a press release about the survey.  ]]> /blog/entries/2008-04-11-Retro_sites.html Mon, 14 April 2008 10:23:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2008-04-11-Retro_sites.html
Sulake takes such illegal activity very seriously. There are several aspects that also make the situation potentially dangerous for Habbo players: some retro hotels operate as scam or phishing sites as well, recording Habbo names and passwords and then stealing the virtual items, such as furniture from the users on the legit hotel. Not to mention viruses and Trojans, which are found on many of these fake sites.

Most of the retro sites function very poorly and a typical retro hotel has only a couple of simultaneous users.  To protect its IP-rights and the users of Habbo, Sulake has now decided to take action.

During January and February Sulake has approached  retro hotel site owners with cease and desist letters with the objective of informing the site owners about the illegality of the activity and after that stopping these services. In these letters Sulake offered amicable solutions to solve the situations. Also ISPs and hosting service providers of retro hotel site owners were contacted. Some of the people contacted were cooperative, some not.

At the moment Sulake Legal Department is preparing court proceedings against a number of retro hotel site owners. Further legal actions were already taken against certain scammers in Holland at the end of last year, see e.g. this article.  

Short facts:
Retro site: A site that illegally runs a non-authorized, emulated Habbo server which is able to communicate with the Habbo client. The name “retro hotel” comes from the fact that the servers normally run older versions of Habbo.

Retro distributor: A website that distributes server software that can be used to set up a retro hotel.

Scam site: A site that asks for the visitors’ Habbo name and password, or tries to trick the visitor to disclose them in another way. The site owner will then collect the usernames and passwords and steal the furni of the tricked person in the official Habbo Hotel.


]]> /blog/entries/2008-04-03-Global_Habbo_Youth_Survey-mobile.html Thu, 03 April 2008 01:51:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2008-04-03-Global_Habbo_Youth_Survey-mobile.html
However, Nokia's dominance at the top of the global chart has been weakened over the last 18 months.  In the survey, conducted across 31 countries by Habbo, it is clear that Nokia has lost some favour with teens to Sony Ericsson and Samsung since autumn 2006, when the previous Global Habbo Youth Survey was conducted.

Despite still being the favoured handset in 15 of the 31 countries polled, Nokia loses out to Sony Ericsson in markets such as the UK, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. In all of these markets Nokia ranked first in 2006. In the UK both Sony Ericsson and Samsung are rated higher than Nokia. This suggests that brand loyalty to Nokia, amongst teens globally, hasn't increased alongside Nokia's market share, which reached 40% in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Compared to the previous 2006 survey, mobile phone usage was the one single area that showed the most significant growth compared to other topics surveyed. The results show for example that teens are now regularly using their mobile handsets as entertainment devices. In the 2006 survey only 38 per cent of teens used their handset to listen to music; now 71 per cent of teenagers are using their mobiles as a portable mp3 player.  80 percent of teens in Singapore, Italy and Austria listened to music in this way, though teens in Japan and Finland listen to music on their mobiles the least.

In addition to talking, text messages are still the most used phone function, with 88 per cent of teens regularly communicating via SMS.  But the survey shows that teens are also using entertainment applications much more than they were in 2006.  70 per cent of teens are now using their mobile to take photos and videos, an 11 percentage points increase compared to 2006.  64 per cent now play games on their mobile compared to 51 per cent in 2006.  Over a quarter of teens also use their mobile to surf the net, email and send instant messages.

Teens are now using their mobiles to simultaneously access information, communicate and have fun. The teen mobile phone market is competitive and lucrative; but it is clear that by developing phones that deliver an engaging user experience across applications, such as texting, listening to mp3s and playing games, mobile brands can attract a new teen audience to their devices.

A report of the Global Habbo Youth Survey 2008 is available to buy as a hard copy book of 250 pages. To place an order, please visit the Sulake webstore.

Check out also a press release about the survey.]]> /blog/entries/2008-03-17-Global_Habbo_Youth_Survey_to_launch_in_April.html Mon, 17 March 2008 11:23:00 EET http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2008-03-17-Global_Habbo_Youth_Survey_to_launch_in_April.html
Following the footsteps of the previous research, the new Youth Survey book dives into thrilling insights of the typical teen of today. 58,000 teenagers aged from 12 to 18 years old from 31 countries took part in the research that provides valuable data for anyone interested in the youth segment and online communities/virtual worlds.

The broad report covers areas such as teen interests, values, attitudes, online habits, social media usage, consumption behavior and brand preferences. The analysis is presented on a global and country level, and five psycho-graphical youth segments are explained and used in the analysis.

Compared to the previous version done in 2006, this new publication includes data from 9 new countries and the analysis is taken further throughout the book, including more comparison between different countries. The survey helps to understand the reality where today’s teenagers live, and see what are the commonalities versus differences among global youth.

For more information on the research and to place orders, please contact Sulake’s Research Director Emmi Kuusikko, emmi.kuusikko@sulake.com.

The book will be out in the beginning of April 2008!]]> /company/events Fri, 14 March 2008 11:13:00 EET http://www.sulake.com:80/company/events

Miten kuluttajat valjastetaan brändilähettiläiksi?

AIKA: huhtikuun 24. päivä, klo 18.00 alkaen
PAIKKA: Sulake, pääkonttori, Korkeavuorenkatu 35.

Suomen merkittävin internet-yhteisöpalveluiden tarjoaja Sulake järjestää huhtikuussa tapahtuman, josta uuden ajan markkinoijan ei kannata jäädä pois! Tule näkemään ja kuulemaan Sulakkeen ja sen asiakkaiden suulla miten kuluttajat aktivoidaan brändiviestin lähettiläiksi.

Ohjelma:

Keynote: Marketing in a Virtual Environment
- Brand experiences in games, virtual worlds and social networks
Jonathan Epstein, President & CEO, DoubleFusion

Sulakkeen kv-nuorisotutkimuksen Suomen tulosten julkistus
- Teinien ja nuorten aikuisten mediakäyttö ja brändimieltymykset
Emmi Kuusikko, Director, User and Market Insight, Sulake

Case: Samsungin kokemukset Habbon virtuaalimaailmassa
Reidar Wasenius, Markkinointipäällikkö, Samsung Electronics

Case: Stabilo kasvatti myyntiään IRC-Gallerian kampanjalla
Heli Vainio, Brand Manager , Oy Lindell Ab

Luvassa myös muita case-esityksiä, runsaasti luovaa keskustelua, verkottumista (IRL), Stig Dogg -keikka, juomaa/ruokaa ja hyvää tunnelmaa Sulakkeen linnassa!  

Ilmoittautumiset: events@sulake.com



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Kuva: Anna Hämäläinen]]> /blog/entries/2008-02-14-Valentines.html Thu, 14 February 2008 10:54:00 EET http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2008-02-14-Valentines.html  
As a preparation for the day of love we wanted to find out what teens and tweens globally think about relationships, dating etc. Activity certainly was not a problem, as we got over 64,000 replies for our Habbo Valentines poll! Despite climbing divorce rates amongst parents, we found out that teens today are really big romantics at heart: 66% believe in love at first sight and 75% per cent would like to get married one day. About 53% of all the people surveyed want to be married before the ripe old age of 25 – if this will happen the future will certainly be different ☺ 
 
It also seems that the old saying “it’s the inside that counts” still counts – when asking about important qualities of the special someone, personality and sense of humor was placed above everything else!

Habborella and lots of hugs

A couple of weeks before the actual Valentine’s day Habbo was transformed into a Habborella cruise ship, during which the “ship crew” (i.e. Habbo staff) concentrated solely on arranging love, passion and dating related activities to entertain the cruise guests ☺ Today on Valentines day, the cruise will culminate to a Valentines Ball, which will surely be the party of the year! 

As part of the Valentines activities, Habbo also arranged a virtual version of the Free Hugs campaign on Monday the 11th. The virtual hugging campaign was carried out in several Habbo communities around the world, and Habbos were thrilled of the event, showing up in enthusiastic masses to participate in the hugging ☺ In Australia the real-life Free Hugs predecessor Juan Mann also participated in the hugging event in Habbo with his own, pixilated character.

If you don’t know this: the Free hugs campaign was originally started by an Australian guy called Juan Mann whose life mission once became reaching out and hugging strangers to brighten up their lives. Since the start of the ‘movement’, people have been following Juan’s footsteps, and e.g. in Youtube you can find several videos of the hugging movement from all over the world ☺

Our other community, Finland’s largest social networking service IRC-Galleria also arranged some exciting Valentine’s stuff – one of their missions has been to find out what role the service has had in matching people. So far they have found 600 married people and over 1800 people who found a dating partner in IRC-Galleria.

Funky Valentines Day to you all!]]> /blog/entries/2008-02-05-Worlds_no1_DJ_to_concert_in_Habbo.html Tue, 05 February 2008 02:54:00 EET http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2008-02-05-Worlds_no1_DJ_to_concert_in_Habbo.html Armin van Buuren, who was recently voted as the number one DJ in the world by DJ Mag, plays a live DJ set in Habbo NL’s Postbank Bizznizz Lounge, Wednesday Feb 6th, 4pm-6pm CET.

The DJ’s first virtual performance is simultaneously broadcasted on Habbo Radio, where the set will be available for listening for two weeks after the performance. The DJ set on Habbo Radio is accessible from other countries, and can be listened to by 100,000 people at the same time.

Habbo users can chat with Armin in the Postbank Bizznizz Lounge on Wednesday from 4pm to 5pm before the gig. The DJ’s virtual visit can also be followed through a video stream in Armin’s Habbo group page created for the concert. The DJ performance will be from 5pm to 6pm CET where he will give his first virtual live concert ever. The concert can be viewed live on the streaming video in the group page.

In cooperation with Armin Van Buuren and Postbank, Habbo has also organized a knowledge quiz and a pixel art competition in which Habbo’s are asked to design a CD cover for Armin.

The DJ set Armin plays in Habbo is his only show he plays in the Netherlands before kicking off to his Armin Only world tour starting of on April 19th.

]]> /blog/entries/2008-01-02-300th_Celebrity_Guest_to_visit_Habbo_early_2008.html Wed, 02 January 2008 11:26:00 EET http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2008-01-02-300th_Celebrity_Guest_to_visit_Habbo_early_2008.html Habbo has hosted VIP events with artists from the music and film industry, sport athletes, authors and other famous celebrities from around the globe. In total, close to 300 guests have visited different Habbo communities and some of them have returned multiple times and spent time on different language sites.

Amongst the most popular guests have been Akon, Ashlee Simpson, Avril Lavigne, Beastie Boys, Bullet for my Valentine, Chris Brown, Cradle of Filth, Faithless, Fergie, Gorillaz, H.I.M., Hilary Duff, Jamelia, Jesse McCartney, Lily Allen, Lordi, Ozzy Osbourne, Pink, Pussycat Dolls, Rihanna, Sean Kingston, Sugar Babes, The Dudesons, The Rasmus, Tokio Hotel and Westlife.

The Celebrity Guest appearances are a great win-win-win-win situation, practically for everybody. Record companies, management agencies, movie studios etc. get to promote the latest album/single or movie. The artist/celebrity engages in direct conversation with thousands of fans regardless of geographical location, and most of them extend the original length of their visit and many of them come back – simply because visiting Habbo is so much fun! The celebrities are hugely popular amongst the teen audience and hence the traffic in Habbo often increases substantially during the visits. And for the Habbo user, well... I think that speaks for itself!

So who's next? Armin van Buuren, one of the world's leading Dance & Trance DJ, is going to visit Habbo in February of 2008. The way it looks now, he will be the 300th celebrity to entertain the Habbo audience. However, February is yet a month away and all of the 18 Habbo communities are attracting their own VIP visitors to come to Habbo, so the title may just go to someone else.

]]> /blog/entries/2007-12-27-HC_Christmas Thu, 27 December 2007 10:32:00 EET http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2007-12-27-HC_Christmas IRC-Galleria – a part of Sulake’s product portfolio – has done recently such cool new stuff, that it is almost compulsory to blog about it! So here goes.

To begin with it is important to note that IRC-Galleria reaches on a weekly basis almost 50% of the Finnish population between 15-24 year olds - the reach is just astonishing. Thus you can imagine how interesting the service is for e.g. bands, artists, movie promoters etc.

In November the Finnish metal band Mokoma and IRC-Galleria arranged together probably the world’s first online community gig. The band had decided to release their new album in a live concert (before it came to the stores) and this concert was also broadcasted live to their fan community in IRC-Galleria. Fans got also live backstage footage as well a change to chat with the band during the event. The live concert was attended by only 500 people, but close to 5,000 fans got to see the concert online in IRC-Galleria! The response from the fans was super positive and boosted record sales as well ☺

As Finland’s definitive # 1 social networking service, IRC-Galleria is filled with artist fan communities and Christmas presented a perfect time for the artists to thank their fans with exclusive material. This was done through a very special “hard-core Christmas calendar” campaign, which offers the community members somewhat unusual surprises.

Here are just some of the extra-special treats: unplugged live performances by many known Finnish artists e.g. Hanoi Rocks and The Rasmus, previews from the upcoming Dudesons episodes and full-length motion pictures – the Finnish/Chinese martial arts epic Jade Warrior and Finnish short film Heavy Metal. The movies can be viewed through the calendar until the end of the year. 

The calendar page, named HC Christmas, rose instantly to the #1 position in popularity in IRC-Galleria, and 324 000 of the monthly overall 460 000 registered members saw the Xmas campaign spreading across the community ☺ Absolutely a cool Christmas gift for the users!

As mentioned previously in our press release, the IRC-Galleria concept is soon going international, as it will be re-branded and introduced in pilot countries during spring 2008. More news about that soon!  

Happy Holidays to everyone!

]]> /blog/entries/2007-11-02-Mini_Friday Fri, 02 November 2007 01:38:00 EET http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2007-11-02-Mini_Friday

Tens of millions of people use virtual worlds on PCs. World of Warcraft, Habbo, Second Life, Club Penguin and other virtual worlds have made them mainstream online entertainment. And it doesn't stop there. Some analysts and experts believe virtual worlds to be the next major phase in the development of the Web. Gartner predicted in April: “By the end of 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a ‘second life’, but not necessarily in Second Life.”

On the other hand, another future prediction is the rise of mobile Internet. Internet use is currently being detached from the PC environment and expanded to various mobile devices.

In the crossroads of these trends is a vast uncharted territory: virtual worlds on mobile devices. And I have a tickling feeling that we'll see something interesting development in this field soon :)

We at Sulake started thinking, designing and prototyping mobile Habbo Hotel already some years ago. In 2004 we developed two mobile Habbo prototypes, but the time wasn't right for a commercial product. It worked only on high-end phones that teens didn't have and data traffic costs for users were just too high.

Later in 2006 we decided to setup a small research project around mobile virtual worlds. In order to understand their desirability and nature in real-world use, we launched a project called Mini Friday. It's a simple mobile virtual world – at this stage meant for adults – and it can be downloaded and used by anyone for free at minifriday.com. It works on most Nokia Series 60 phones.

Mini Friday was launched on December 21, 2006. We haven't promoted it actively at all; users have found it based on word of mouth mostly. And now we have over 155,000 registered users who come mostly from surprising places: the top three countries are Indonesia, Brunei and Russia!

Mini Friday is a straight port of core Habbo functionality to mobile phones in order to see the differences in usage between PC-based and mobile virtual worlds. For now, we have just worked around the weaknesses of mobile phones: small screen, text typing limitations and limited processing power. However, the prototype is not yet using any of the strengths of mobile devices, such as constant connectivity, real and virtual world connections, media creation and sharing, local networking, messaging, contacts integration, standby and screensaver screen integration, etc.

By experimenting with the above possibilities we'll see new types of virtual worlds in the future. One existing example is MoiPal made by Ironstar Helsinki, which is a combination of a virtual world and a tamagotchi. I also believe virtual worlds and social networking can blend quite naturally on mobile phones. People are already using voice for real-time and SMS text messaging for asynchronous communication. Both could be augmented by virtual worlds and profile-based communication respectively.

In practice, the huge selection of different handset models with different technologies makes it difficult to launch a service that could be reached by everyone. And the strengths of mobile phones can't really be used on older Java phones. But on selected platforms it is possible to innovate fresh concepts and user experiences, and build completely new worlds :)

]]> /blog/entries/2007-10-25-Monsters_of_Habbo Thu, 25 October 2007 02:42:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2007-10-25-Monsters_of_Habbo hard rock or grindcore. Realizing this we decided to give it a go in Habbo!

This year’s Habboween (Habbo-Halloween) is based on a monstrous heavy metal & hard rock festival Monsters of Habbo, which kicked off in most of the Habbo communities all over the world on Monday the 22nd of October. To celebrate the horror festival, Habbo is this year providing the users a chance to show their musical talent in a number of hard rock and heavy metal competitions. Solo artists and bands can put together killer guitar riffs, head banging bass lines and thundering drum sound sets using the unique Habbo Trax Machine mixing tool. The winning Habbo artist will be crowned as the heavy metal master and win spectacular Habbo prizes.

We received some early indications from some countries and it seems that the Habbos are going ballistic with the metal theme campaign! E.g. the Dutch Habbos have created over 1,800 bands in just three days and are throwing gigs to each other.
  
At the Monster's Ball event, held on Halloween's eve, Habbo communities all over the world will be visited by famous metal artists, who will then decide on the local winners of the competition. The Welsh metalcore band Bullet for my Valentine will make an appearance at the UK and German Habbo, whereas the Spanish community is getting a special visit from the local heavy stars, the Hamlet.

The US Habbo will be receiving several special visits from widely known heavy metal gurus, including the Swedish trash metal band The Haunted and legendary Cradle of Filth. The Finnish monster band Lordi  will also make a visit to the Habbo virtual world in the US.  

Monsterous Habboween to all!

PS. Check out the cool Monsters of Habbo images in the press image bank.


]]> /blog/entries/2007-10-11-Habbowood_DMA Thu, 11 October 2007 10:46:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2007-10-11-Habbowood_DMA
We saw this again in September with the worldwide movie-making contest Habbowood Digital Movie Awards. Talk about user-generated content! As a result of the global film competition spanning all 30 Habbo countries, we got over 1.5 million entries and those movies were watched over 5 million times in total. Pretty amazing. To me this level of interaction and sheer richness of the playing experience is something that truly sets virtual worlds apart from traditional social networking.

To mark the importance of the Digital Movie Awards we asked a group of animation and 3D specialists to judge the movies. Of course their task was not to browse though all the 1.5 million movies, but they chose the global winner from a selection of top five films, chosen by the local Habbo communities and a pre-judging panel. In our panel we had Matt Johnson, VFX Supervisor at Cinesite, award winning 2DTV animator Tim Searle from Triffic Films, Jim Thacker, the editor of 3D animation bible 3D World and Antti Jokinen, who has directed funky music videos for greats such as Missy Elliot, Kelly Clarkson and Amerie.
 
After an exciting panel member’s meeting on Habbo we got a final global winner. It was a tight battle between Japan and Russia, but the deciding vote went to the Japanese film. Congrats to Marsa.jp from Habbo.jp! Check out the winning movie!

Lots of things going on in Habbo, just wait for the hard-rocking Monsters of Habbo Heavy Metal Festival in a few weeks!

]]> /blog/entries/2007-09-17-Virtual_Recycling Mon, 17 September 2007 10:57:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2007-09-17-Virtual_Recycling Habbo there has been people who do not understand why anyone would buy virtual furniture – in other words they have misunderstood the whole concept of Habbo, which is not to sell virtual items, but entertainment and experiences. You can compare it to e.g. going to the movies.  

At least for the people mentioned above it must be beyond comprehension that the same virtual furniture is being recycled as well. In Habbo, it is possible to recycle the virtual furni that you don’t need anymore. In exchange for recycling the old items, using a recycling device called Ecotron, the Habbo user receives a brand new piece of furni, which is in fact created from the old materials, or so the design makes you believe. In a virtual world the bits of data are of course always new. 

A joke? Maybe not. Since it's launch, the Ecotron device has recycled 4.634.117 pieces of virtual furniture and the amount increases all the time. Hopefully Habbos are as enthusiastic recyclers in the real world too!

]]> /blog/entries/2007-08-21-advertising_possibilities Tue, 21 August 2007 02:34:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2007-08-21-advertising_possibilities
International Herald Tribune covers the issue in its recent article, titled “ Advertisers find new headaches in lawless world of social Web sites”. Based mainly on the recent case of advertising junk food to children in the UK, journalist Doreen Carvajal, is both perfectly on the spot about advertisers’ responsibilities, but does not really take into account the user-experience side. “Companies are finding themselves on the front lines of criticism about fast-evolving standards”, she writes and is absolutely right. Thinking about services going beyond country borders, operating the same virtual world in hundreds of countries, which law or  advertising standard should you follow?

In the world of Habbo the issue is a bit easier, since our communities operate under separate country organizations. Due to this we work according country specific regulations, of course taking into account global best practices and our own rules in advertising. 

Interviewed for the article, Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst with the research firm, eMarketer says it exactly how it is: “We're moving to a world of user-generated content and it's changing on a minute-by-minute basis. I think marketers are just going to have to get used to it.”

At the same time it should be noted that according to many studies advertising in virtual worlds or social networking sites are much more appealing to users than in traditional media. ]]> /blog/entries/2007-07-11-HabboTrax Wed, 11 July 2007 03:50:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2007-07-11-HabboTrax Traxmachine , an online music mixing tool.

Simple to use and producing stunning results, Traxmachine is bringing real music to Habbo for the first time - of course music has been part of the communities for a long time in the form of singing competitions, artist visits (check out e.g. the stunning artist list of Habbo.com), internet radio shows etc. But now the Traxmachine helps Habbo community members themselves mix samples and different sound-sets from rock to hip-hop to electro to punk. Habbos can use Traxmachine to make their own tracks to play in their own virtual Habbo rooms, host online house-parties or simply make the soundtrack to their virtual lives. In the upcoming Traxmachine version the Trax tunes can also be shared and traded with friends, placed in jukebox players and exported to other sites. Just to mention a few of the super-cool features.

From the Trax press release: "Habbo is known as an environment for teens to be creative and self-expressive and one of the best ways to demonstrate this is through music. With Traxmachine Habbo wants to help nurture the DJs of the future – the mixing tool gives the teen DJs everything they need to be the megastars of tomorrow."

As easy as it may sound, to make really good tracks with ready samples is not the easiest thing in the world. But when you get the beats in place, you want to invite your friends to the party ;) Traxmachine is now live in all Habbo communities - try it out in your own country: local Trax pages are at www.habbo.xx/trax! 


]]> /blog/entries/2007-07-09-Welcome Mon, 09 July 2007 01:50:00 EEST http://www.sulake.com:80/blog/entries/2007-07-09-Welcome 1. Sulake is one of the world leaders in virtual worlds, online communities and social networking. We’ve been doing this since 2000 and now we feel that we are ready to share our expertise and know-how with the rest of the world. And this includes both technology and business.
2. Habbo is a vast virtual world with lots of exciting and interesting news, events, content, stories, innovations and extraordinary happenings, which we want to share with all of you.
3. How could we be without a blog?

The blog section of our company pages will be updated as often as possible. If you want to comment on articles, please go to the contact section, fill in the form and choose “blog comment”.

We hope that you enjoy the Sulake world as much as we do!

Best Wishes,
Juhani Lassila
Communications Director,
Sulake Corporation  ]]>