Habbo and imeem
Habbo
Estimated unique monthly visitors: 163,000
Habbo is like a Second Life for kids, set in a hotel. Habbo claims to be a community for teens, but the potty humor (run the Toilet Marathon!), Mario Brothers-style avatars and cartoonish, pre-sexual ambiance feels more like tween territory. Users get their own room in the Habbo Hotel and can decorate it with free creativity tools and "furni" (pre-made furniture purchased with Habbo Coins). Like Second Life, the hotel has private space (guest rooms) and public space for socializing and "roughhousing" in multi-player games like snowball fights, Wobble Squabble and Battle Ball.
Habbo is a window into how today’s children think, play and socialize, which is very different from the way most marketers of a certain age grew up playing. It’s important to recognize how many kids’ games and toys have an online component and how integrated the internet is with the way children experience their world.
imeem
Estimated unique monthly visitors: 750,000
Everyone's a DJ! Riding on the trend of personal taste distribution, imeem gives members the opportunity to share their MP3 playlists, photo collages and video collections. Community members can download other people's music playlists or stream the MP3s directly from the site, then vote on who has the best playlists. Each week, the playlists are ranked, and people's ascending or descending order is noted. Members can discuss and mark playlists as "favorite," plus view which ones are rising and falling.
imeem performs a service by uniting people on both sides of the creative process: Creators, the people who make stuff, and Consumer-Commentators, the people who use and evaluate the stuff that other people make. The Creators benefit by finding an audience and gaining feedback and validation that other people appreciate their aesthetic. The Consumer-Commentators get to listen to free music playlists then express their opinions and thoughts through blog postings, linking to their favorite playlists and voting for the creations they like the best.
Marketers would do well to find ways to engage the consumer in judging and commenting on their products. Tapping into consumer opinion to shape products is not a new idea, but the feedback mechanism -- once the purview of focus group facilities and public opinion monitors -- is now a simple tool that any user or brand can employ as a brand engagement tool.
