Recruiting Teenagers Online for Research

Habbo Hotel (www.habbohotel.com), the growing teenage community website, was recently commissioned by the online youth market research company, the Fat Group to supply a large sample of UK teenagers for a new product development task for a major food and drink client.

The Fat Group was briefed by the client to supply a sample of teenagers for an online qualitative research task, and Habbo Hotel was able to supply the required sample in a short space of time. The whole exercise was designed, implemented, analysed and delivered back to the client within 48 hours.

Habbo Hotel has attracted its solid community of 500,000 users (14 -20 year olds) with a constantly evolving offering that closely matches teenage lifestyles. The site allows users to express their personalities online by creating their own private rooms and kitting them out with funky furniture, socialising with friends old and new, swapping gossip, sending SMS messages to friends and designing and buying mobile phone logos.

According to Chris Bland, Habbo Hotel Business Development Director, "We're delighted to have helped the Fat Group fulfil their client brief. Our enthusiastic users have a wealth of views on most things and welcome any opportunity to share them. Market research is just one of the variety of marketing tools we offer to benefit third-party brands and we are eager to apply our expertise in the youth market to other brands with a teen focus."

Habbo Hotel currently has over 500,000 users after launching in January this year and is reportedly attracting new users at a rate of over 40,000 each week. The site is the first commercially run chat environment that introduces the concept of distances and "real" 3D space, which gives users a much more real experience.

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.