You are here: Haro was a bit cagey about how the move to a money-based currency changed things for Habbo. "There's a massive difference between selling currency and selling property. I'm not going to spell the beans but do think about it." He did admit that "It did actually add a lot of flexibility" to the game economy. "Teenagers really do get the fact that you own a piece of property and you get to trade it."
The company began to introduce rare items, produced for a limited time (though you could purchase as many as you want while they're available. These items are "pretty expensive, they're like five bucks each." When it comes to selling items to kids, "Many users might only put in a couple dollars, but there's a few who will put in thousands of dollars because we enable them to."
Beyond direct currency sales, Habbo hotel supports advertising -- which began with web-style ad banners. "We're really trying to migrate away from that," Haro explained. Advertisers now understand that "you can communicate with the teens, not at the teens. We're putting out branded furniture which the teens love even more, oddly enough."
He showed off Target-branded furniture now launching in the U.S. Rare items do value up in Habbo -- "Some items value over $2000 each. Some people try to monetize this on eBay but it actually doesn't work that well. The teenagers don't check eBay." According to Haro, the items on Habbo Hotel in 2007 have habbohotel coins a total market value of around $550,000,000.
Copyright © 2009-2010,