Habbo Hotel's parent company, Sulake Corporation, announced a 6 million Euro investment today. The funding comes from Movida Group (a joint venture between SoftBank and Asian Groove). The company, which is based in Finland, will use the money to create merchandise and mobile games for the East Asian market. They've also revealed some fairly impressive stats: 53 million Habbo characters have been created, and they have 7 million unique users per month. The company launched in 2000 and has more than doubled its revenues every year. Sulake now employs 270 people.
As mentioned previously, Habbo Hotel is a virtual world similar to Cyworld, Hive7 and Gaia Online. It's extremely popular with pre-teens, and makes money by charging micropayments for virtual items - these include furniture for your room and gifts for your friends. The future looks extremely bright for these character-based communities: as mobile payments become more popular, Habbo could really move to the next level.
![[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]](http://sale-online.click/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/habbolarge.png){kind=link}