MobileMonday Global

^{Running a pilot in Finland} Habbo Community goes mobile

The super successful virtual community Habbo Hotel is extending its reach to mobile Internet. At the moment it is running a mobile pilot in Finland.

Sulake Corporation, who is running the wildly successful gaming community, plans to launch its mobile services globally during the first quarter 2007, said the head of marketing Pasi Ilola. He was speaking at Helsinki MobileMonday X-mas party.

Sulake Corporation was found to be the fastest growing technology company in the Nordics in a recent Deloitte competition.

The main product of Sulake is Habbo Hotel virtual community that has more one million registered virtual characters. The community sites had more than one million unique visitors in October according to the Nielsen/Netratings numbers.

Ilola said that the mobile features will be available over both WAP and i-Mode networks and they will work on almost any color screen phone. The service will also support personalized bookmarks.

Mobile user will be able to send and receive Habbo messages to friend lists. There will be also mobile news and competitions, My Habbo Home pages, Habbo credit purchases and Habbo Club subscription purchases. User will be able to download games, wallpapers, ringtones and other content.

Up this point Habbo’s only mobile feature has been mobile payment.

Ilola said, that Sulake has multiple payment methods with over 170 payment partners. Payment methods include SMS, online banking, credit cards, single drop billing (IVR), prepaid youth cards, scratch cards, direct ISP billing and many other online methods.

“The prepaid cards were immediate success in Finland when they came to R-Kiosks. The word spread between Habbo players without any official marketing.”

The long-term objectives of Sulake call for the companu to become a provider of world-class interactive entertainment with brand extensions in animation/TV, publications, consumer products and broad portfolio of consumer properties addressing different target audiences.

Sulake Corporation was founded in May 2000. It is owned by advertising agency Taivas Group, teleoperator Elisa, venture investors 3i Group Plc, Benchmark Capital, and Movida Group, a Japanese joint venture of SoftBank BB, SoftBank Group and Asian Groove. Also management and personnel are owners.

Sulake has 290 full time employees in 19 countries and about 300 moderators and community managers.

The average age of Habbo players is 15. The division between boys and girls is 51-49.

More than two thirds of Habbo income comes from users, the rest comes from advertising. Ilola won’t reveal how much an average user spends in a month but says that it is more that a price of a movie ticket.

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