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January 24, 2006
Taatu launches HabboHotel clone
The success of the Habbo Hotel, an animated chat room or “virtual world”, developed by Finland’s Sulake Labs has not gone unnoticed by Europe’s enterprising founder community. The clones are a-coming.
The most recent is Taatu, a Belgium-based venture. Taatu raised capital from SF Investments and two business angels, Philippe Moitroux (founded and sold venture-backed ITMasters to BMC) and Maurice Olivier (an investment adviser who was an exec at Cambridge Technology Partners when it was acquired by Novell).
In the US, the highest profile clone is Second Life, which shares one of the same backers as Sulake Labs, Benchmark Capital.
They all target teens and people that spend a lot of time online. The business model is pretty much the same too: get users to spend real money to buy tokens that can only be used inside the chatroom to pay for virtual things. When I interviewed the founder of Sulake Labs, he told me that it is a business with good margins.
Yes, that would be what be right: users pay real money for virtual money.
According to Rodrigo (a Paris-based tech-sector blogger), Taatu has 30,000 new users signed up in the past 4 weeks, mainly in Belgium, France and The Netherlands. It apparently plans to expand into Anglo-Saxon countries in 2006. It offers a few more features than Habbo, such as a cinema where users can view film trailers, and seems to have some billboard ads like in the real world, but the idea and look is the same.
These companies are being built to be acquired by the likes of Yahoo, Liberty Media, IAC, or one of the other larger entertainment media companies looking to buy new business models and “audiences”.
Taatu screenshot
Read - Benchmark invests in Sulake Labs (The Deal)
Read - Just discovered another 3D world (Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz blog)
Posted on January 24, 2006 09:08 AM | Posted to Games (PC and other) | Venture Capital | Permalink
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» Just discovered another 3D world: Taatu from Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz
While browsing for T-shirts on Lafraise.com… And, they have registered about 30.000 Taatu users in only 4 weeks! Their interface is ultra-slick (just created my avatar with a beard and orange trousers…). I’m online on taatu right now in [Read More]
Tracked on January 24, 2006 09:37 AM
