Habbo creates youth panels for market research

The world’s largest virtual world for teenagers has already set up thirty-two panels across Europe, Australia, South America and the US.

With 60,000 teenagers joining the Brazilian panel in two months, 15,000 teens in the US and 10,000 in the UK and Germany Habbo already has the biggest teen panel network.

Habbo will earn an income from the youth panels, while the teens will receive payment in credits that can be used in Habbo’s virtual world.

The online youth community owned by Sulake has 13m unique users each month across 31 countries.

Lauri Löfveblad, Cint Country Manager for Sweden, Norway and Finland says: “This is an exciting opportunity to offer our clients access to teenagers. This next generation of consumers is a group, which until now has been a difficult for researchers to find, particularly in an environment which is in compliance with market research industry guidelines.”

This week Habbo revealed a study into youth behaviour that shows teenagers no longer ally themselves with one youth movement but swing between groups online and in real life, in what Habbo terms “tribal tourism”.