You are here: Habbo's origins are said to be from Mobiles Disco, a 1999 hobby project by creative designer Sampo Karjalainen and technologist Aapo Kyrölä for a Finnish band, a virtual chat room running on Aapo's Fuse technology.
After having been contracted to design a virtual game and chat called Lumisota (Snow Wars) for a Finnish ISP, Elisa, they were contracted for another project. They developed Hotelli Kultakala (eng. Hotel Goldfish) with a small team of developers and it was launched in August 2000 on the ISP's web portal(habbohotel coins).
Aapo and Sampo and Dee Edwards, an entrepreneur from the UK, wanted to create an international business based on the virtual hotel concept and worked on a plan in autumn 2000 and raised finance. By the end January 2001, Habbo Hotel had been launched in beta mode. The new hotel launched officially a few weeks afterwards, aimed at the teenage market, with marketing and payment partners in place, run from a HQ in London(habbo credits). It had a new credits system and community and safety features. The next hotel was launched in Switzerland a few months later, in four languages. It has since been expanded to over 31 countries in five continents, including Hotelli Kultakala in Finland which was made into a Habbo Hotel and has been invested in by venture capitalists.
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