HabboHotel, the popular animated chatroom, is on track to hit sales of $77M this year, according to Danny Rimer of Index Ventures. The site is run by Finnish company Sulake, which was founded in 2000 and employs 250 people.
Habbo is broadly similar to Cyworld - users move between a series of animated chatrooms and pay for items using Habbo coins. Users can buy furniture to decorate their rooms, buy gifts for their friends and pay to play in-world games. Coins are bought using a cell phone, credit card or debit card, and each one costs around 20 cents. Some rooms also include billboard advertising for real-world products. In the light of horror stories about MySpace, I'm sure parents of younger kids will be less anxious about letting them use Habbo (although there are reports of Habbo users being scammed into giving away their account details). On the other hand, you could argue that these worlds are exploitative, and exist to separate kids from their pocket money.
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