Ten Ton Hamster

Habbo Hotel is a virtual playground for teenagers to hang out with their friends on line. Habbo Hotel began in 2000 and is owned and operated by the Finnish company, Sulake Corporation.

Eight years later, Habbo has grown in to one of the largest and fastest growing, online hangouts for teens. Here are some quick Habbo facts (as of April 2008):

• 32 local communities
• 94,000,000 registered users
• 9,5000,000/month unique visitors
• 990,000,000/month page impressions
• 90% of the population is between 13 and 18 years old
• The average visit last 36 minutes

Pretty impressive numbers!

Habbo Hotel is free to play, but in order to get the premium services, Hotel inhabitants buy Habbo Credits, which is also the currency in game. You'll also need to purchase Credits in order to buy items in game such as accessories, clothing and furniture. There are no downloads required, but you must have Shockwave in order to run the windows.

Character creation is slightly limiting, I didn’t get a real feeling of being unique once I entered the hotel. After you create your look, you then get to pick a style of room.

Once you are in the Hotel, you will navigate through different chat rooms. Each room is decorated like a hotel room would be. There are public rooms like hallways and promenades and parks to meet in, and Guest Rooms, which are the personal hotel rooms of all of the guests. Traveling between rooms is very easy. All you have to do is use the Hotel Navigator.

Your text can be viewed by all the occupants of a room. You can also you the “whisper” option to send private tells.

There are also a few multiplayer games in Habbo Hotel. One game, Battle Ball, is a strategy game in which you make groups and then compete against each other. There are also two player games to enjoy.

The community is the main component of Habbo Hotel, and chat is moderated for safety reasons. Habbo uses moderation, user education and also has an automatic language filter in place. Adult moderators constantly monitor the chat discussions so that they can ban users that do not follow the chat rules. Users can also report each other if they feel that there is inappropriate chat taking place.

Habbo Club, (known as HC), is part of the premium services that you must pay for. HC members receive a badge which is placed next to their avatar. All members can see this badge. Members also get a different piece of furniture for their room every month. Special clothing and accessories are only available to members as well. It takes 20 Habbo Credits to join the HC, which translates in to $5.00 (you’ll get 25 Habbo Coins).

If you are looking for a cool community with thousands of other teens from all over the world to chat with, check in to the Habbo Hotel!