As part of a Habbox Competition where members had to suggest an article topic to write about, Fiendly suggested an article about Habbo fansites. While I haven’t gone into the specific details that Fiendly suggested, Habbo fansites are an interesting topic as they tend to have a large history and while it’s debatable whether Sulake notices this, they tend to keep people interested in Habbo (and therefore buying your products Sulake, take note!). I would have left years ago if it wasn’t for the fansite community at Habbox!

This article will look at Sulake’s decreasing involvement in Habbo fansites and a possible solution to combat this. If this sounds like an interesting topic to you too, click read more!

Fansites have been around for a long time. Habbox, for example, opened on the 31st of July 2003! For those of you no good at Maths, that means this July, Habbox will have been open for 8 years! That’s incredible and perhaps even more scarier, there are some members that joined in 2003 that are still active today! Despite that, however, the situation of fansites 8 years ago is different to what fansites have become today. Fansites were something new: radios managed to gain 100s of listeners, Habboxrare values were considered the norm in Habbo UK trading rooms/furni shops etc. Nowadays, the radio is considered good when it gains 100 listeners and the introduction of the marketplace has wiped out the current function of the Habbox rare values (they’ll bounce back!).

This could be blamed on a number of different factors. Firstly, nowadays, there is a lot more competition. New fansites crop up every day and while most close fairly quickly, there’s always a couple that manage to work hard against the odds and gain a reasonable amount of members. However, the main problem is Sulake’s involvement. There was a time when Habbo notices would announce a Habbo Staff member DJing at a fansite. Also, official fansites popped up and the fansites competed for the top spot (ClubHabbo and Habbox were often voted the gold fansite badge in the UK). This has all changed. Habbo have now only got a list of trustworthy fansites. This meant that fansites had to adapt: they had to work harder than ever before to gain new members for their fansite when they could no longer rely on Habbo to promote them.

Is there a possible solution? It’s possible to argue that Sulake has marginalized Habbo fansites and when people are pushed to the edge of society, they tend to form groups with other marginalized people. I’m not suggesting a Habbox-ClubHabbo merge(although that’d be funny) but if the fansites were to work together, they’d be more likely to get the message out to a wider audience. Often fansites are scattered across Habbo with nothing linking them together and therefore having less impact. If fansites were to come together, they’d have a united front and could dominate more of the hotel… and then the world. Mwhaha. Okay, I’m exaggerating but I hope you get the point.

What do you think? Would fansites working together work in your opinion or is that just being idealistic? Let us know your thoughts by posting in the comments box below! 

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