Sulake

Community driven businessHabbo's social game evolution at 10 years and

going

2Osma Ahvenlampi - Verkkoteollisuus Ry - 2010-10 - Copyright Sulake

World’s Leading Online Hangout and Social Game for Teens


Osma Ahvenlampi



Social places for games, self-expression and communication




2010

8

20052000 2002 2003 20042001 20082006 2007 2009

» 182 million registered Habbo-

characters

» 45 million hours of play / month

» 2 million visits / day› Source: Sulake Statistics, August 2010

182Million

45 Millionhours!!


Community as a focal point

Service vs product development

Customers, extended

Metrics-driven guided business

Agility as a business enabler


10 years of 10 years of


2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65Revenue, million €

H1


The secret to long life?

Continuous reinvention

TechnicalConceptual

Business focus


Software industry under change

“software as a service”“service oriented architecture”

“lightweight clients”“zero deployment”200

6


Software as a Service

• Customer PoV: less systems investments

• Web removes distribution delay.. and demands a corresponding increase in capability for change

• Competition is more immediate


Increasing pace of innovation

“Internet speed” is getting faster

From 6 updates a year (2006) to daily live testing (today)

New version to all markets globally once a week


Why go this fast?

Feedback loop

Early data helps shape final results

Reaction speed matters

Customers prefer the fastest rate of change they can keep up with


Shape of change

• Continuous stream of updates– Features, functions, items– Campaigns, competitions– In-game economy improvements– Usability improvements– Gaming features

• Most content is by players– Every new trend, fad, fashion, event is reflected

– Constant reuse of stuff in new ways


Rapid cycle and big changes

• Most changes are small, even if they sum up to big differences in the end... but not all

• We spent most of 2009 re-developing the entire technology to a completely new platform– Higher performance– Better compatibility– Wider range of supported devices– Enabling other changes


Habbo on the social graph




Social Play


Free-to-play economics

• Micropayments for virtual items and VIP membership

• Advertising as a secondary revenue stream

• Player-to-player marketplace and trading means a market which follows common economic principles– Exchange volumes 10x primary sales

• Non-paying players are also valuableas community members and culturemakers


User created game

World Cup Soccer Arena

Player-created games


A way to reach consumers

Age of Broadcast Media is overEver-smaller, tightly focused behavioral clusters

Reaching large audiences todayrequires reaching multitude of niche

audiencesCost of get-to-market is lower

Complexity of large audiences is higher

Use of word of mouth

Context mattersRelevance is time-sensitive

Osma Ahvenlampi - Verkkoteollisuus Ry - 2010-10 - Copyright Sulake

Metrics-driven innovation?If it's worth doing,

it's got to be worth measuring


Performance measurement

• At daily updates pace, measuring change is sub-daily


Community opinions


Metrics can't tell you what to do

Constant performance measurement is lifeblood for recognizing both problems

and successes

But numbers aren't ideas

Great design comes from vision, skill and experience


An agile, community focused vision


Creativity

FriendsFun

Attention FASHION&

LOOKS

PARTIES & EVENTS

MUSIC

PLAYER CREATEDGAMES

PETS

HOBBIES

?


Thank [email protected] - twitter.com/osma

Documents

Sulake