As some of you may have noticed I’ve been asking around and trying to find out what made us all join Habbox to celebrate Habbox’s 12th birthday. I’ve had an overwhelming number of responses from HabboxForum, and now it’s time to see what most people have to say!

When did you first join Habbox?
A difficult question to sum up as I had such a huge range of responses. The most popular years seemed to be 2005-06 and then 2010, but we have answers from most years. One thing I did notice however is that there were fewer people joining from 2013 onwards. Is that a reflection of newbies being too nervous to post in Habbox Feedback (it’s a scary place, we’ll all agree) or a reflection of the dwindling number of new members?

And just for fun.. MissAlice was the oldest member to post (joining in June 2004 – over 11 years ago!) whilst Cabl was our newest member, joining just last month!

What made you join?
Quite a few older members claim to have first started using Habbox because of Rare Values or News, which is odd as they are some of the quietest departments. There’s even been plenty of discussion over the past few months/years about scrapping the Rare Values department entirely! I guess it really shows you how much times change…
Like me, many people started browsing the Habbox sites long before they signed up to the forum but usually ended up being drawn in by big events during the Habbox Summer Spectacular or Easter Eggstavaganza so they could see how they were doing on the leaderboard. Although it seems like an obvious thing, it could well be useful for Management and General Management to see that those big events (particularly HxSS by the looks of things) could be crucial if we want to increase the number of new members, particularly as they’re long-running events so new users will keep coming back for those two weeks (and hopefully will continue to revisit long after that).

Tell us a bit about what Habbox was like when you first became a member.
Generally most people seem to agree that Habbox and Habbo were much more active. The radio was considerably more popular; even when I joined in 2011 it was considered a failure to have fewer than 40 listeners during peak hours, a number which is pretty much impossible to hit at all today!
-:Undertaker:- brought up an interesting point that may seem obvious but does make me wonder… Habbox (along with all fansites) was much more Habbo-related, and a number of other people said that Habbo News & Rumours was by far the most popular forum. The slow decline in activity in fansites seems to have been brought on by the slow decline in interest over Habbo. It’s particularly interesting to see that the number of people signing up to Habbox slowed after 2013, with the “Great Habbo Mute” (brought on by Channel 4) being in 2012. Maybe Habbo’s odd decision to mute the entire Hotel for weeks actually brought about the beginning of its own fall from popularity?

Are you glad you joined or do you think you’d have been better off if you’d stayed away?
I’m surprised to see here that most people have said glad, and a very few said they had mixed feelings. I’m seriously shocked by this as I would have said that I regret joining the forum simply because I honestly don’t think I would be using the internet as much as I do now if I’d steered clear of Habbo and consequently Habbox.
It’s still nice to see that a number of people said that Habbox has made them friends they would never have met otherwise, and has even taught them new skills. For example, lawrawrrr says the whole reason she got into journalism is because of her interest in the News (now Articles) department!

Who do you miss from when you first joined?
Again, an extremely difficult question to sum up as there have been so many people coming and going over the years. I don’t even recognise a lot of the names, but (going off on a tangent here) I do sometimes wonder about all the people who have left over time. It’s odd to think that anything could have happened to the people you once considered to be your friend on the internet; they could be married with a family, homeless… They may not even be alive for all we know. It seems all the people who claim that the people you meet over the internet aren’t really your friends or don’t matter as much as anyone you know in real life forget that we’re all still real, even if we can’t see each other face-to-face.

What’s the most memorable event for you during your time at Habbox?
Habbox’s Summer Spectaculars seemed to be the most popular choice for answers here! HxSS is always full of drama and it’s hilarious to see who turns out to be the terrible moaners, and who you always thought was quite nice but turns out to be the worst sport EVER! Not to mention the number of people who stay up at all kinds of day and night just to win the tournament! Sadly I’ve never been able to fully take part before as I’ve always been away for one of the weeks but this year I should be at home for both!
And I thought I’d add in one of my personal favourites when scrolling through this threads just because it made me laugh so much, which is Rosie (Elegance)’s story: “Back in 2011, some girl called PurpleeMist/Khey faked her death and posted an thread in the events organisers forum talking about how she owed a “big guy” lots of money and he was coming to get her, she sent worrying messages to Jazz and Paige on Skype about the situation and then disappeared. A week or so later there was a new DJ at HabboxLive and we were all in a Skype call with this DJ and I messaged Jazz saying that it sounded like PurpleeMist and we confronted the DJ about it and it was the same person and then they said to Jazz that their cousin forced them to fake their death and that they were pregnant whilst they were gone and gave birth and named their baby after Jazz.”

What, if anything, would you change now to improve Habbox?
I was disappointed at the number of people who said there was nothing we could do to improve because Habbox is a lost cause as I disagree with this. But those answers aside, a good number of people all agreed that Habbox really needs to improve its presence on Habbo to attract new users. Perhaps it’s time to look at some other fansites who seem to be constantly bustling on the Hotel and see what they’re doing. (Not to copy, just to see what we’re doing wrong!)

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