Habbo: Online firms fighting short atten…

Pay attention. One of the most popular online ‘teen hangouts’ says digital games need to fight harder to battle brief attention spans.

The man in charge of Habbo says that the migration of games to the web is inevitable, but makes fighting for consumers’ time more difficult.

10 years ago, in online games, the assumption was that people spend all their time looking at their computer screens,” CEO Paul LeFontaine told MCV.

But today all of us spend less time looking only at a computer screen. We’re also looking at our phone screens and our tablet screens.

So we have to adjust our product to match the time people have for us, when they use our service around TV, radio, online or other devices.”

Each month over 10m 13 to 15-year-olds log on to Habbo’s user-generated and branded chat rooms, which play host to browser games and celebrity ‘appearances’. The firm also recently launched a new mobile app.

Fortunately we’re used to dealing with a segment that has a very short attention span, so we always think in terms of short interactions. For us, thinking about mobile is natural because short attention span is very much the audience we have.

But attention span and time is probably the largest challenge for any media company wanting to move from one platform to another.”