The wealth of resources out there in the digital world is incredible. There is always something that you din't know about or that has been in use for a few years now and In have just discovered another one today. Habbo Hotel is a virtual community that has been out there since 2000 it seems. I read about this in a BBC article today.
"Habbo Hotel has particular appeal to teenagers and was one of the first virtual communities when it began in 2000 in Finland. It pre-dates other virtual worlds such as Second Life and social networking sites such as MySpace and Bebo.
In the Habbo Hotel users create avatars (or Habbos), buy furniture to furnish their own rooms in the hotel and talk to others in the community via instant message.
Habbo Hotel UK now attracts 750,000 unique users each month, aged 11-18. There are localised Habbo communities in 29 countries. The company behind Habbo said that as of December 2006 more than 66 million Habbos have been created around the world."
BBC 28 Feb 2007
What has caught my eye with this is the fact that the NSPCC has opened up a room at the Habbo Hotel and that there are plans for the drug awareness charity, Frank, to open a room as well. Thius is a great example of how imporgtant organisations such as these can reach out tio their client group via technologies that their client groups' use. Great idea. I look forward to finding out more about this.
Makes me think about virtual worlds in the education sense and how wonderful it would be for example to a Glow World for example in the Scottish context that would offer digital learners a virtual world where they could engage with learning and orther learners within this games based/derived interface. Well worth the investigation...
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