In the beginning, there was IRC. Then, the forums. In early 2001, almost by chance, the metaverse before the metaverse was born: Habbo Hotel, a mix between chat and video game that would later be imitated, in one way or another, in hundreds of applications. Sampo Karlajainen, at 23 years old, had just created something that, a quarter of a century later, would still exist and, to everyone’s surprise at that time, be profitable.
Water and soap
The idea was very simple: a chat room for teenagers to chat with each other with abuse prevention measures and different customization options. Of course, what was initially a resounding success turned out to be a place for all kinds of criminals to indulge in their lowest instincts as soon as its decline began. In 2012, it seemed that Habbo (now without the “Hotel”) belonged to another era and was destined to fail.
In some way, Habbo has survived success: at one point it had 273 million registered avatars and over 500,000 monthly active players. But it has also managed to overcome failure, even though in 2012 it was on the verge of closing and has endured a continuous buying and selling process between different companies. It has even tried to latch onto trends that later ended up failing, such as NFTs.
And, somehow, it has continued to work. With 2900 daily players and a total of 330,000 active in one way or another, Habbo survives by selling different ways to customize your character. However, it is becoming less popular, controversy has followed it and even in 2021 it suffered a raid in which the streamer Quackity invaded the servers with his followers, using the hashtag #NotMyHabbo.
Currently, there are only ten active Habbo Hotel websites in the world: Finland, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, United States, France, Brazil, and Turkey, the latter being the most recent one opened in 2012. How long will this Internet relic continue to exist? Nobody knows. For now, they continue to announce updates on their official website, such as painting contests and different items for their users. Who knows, maybe it will outlive all of us. That’s the power of Habbo.
