Melissa SimHave you gone into hotel lobbies just to use their toilets, “because they’re cleaner”? Ever wandered around your neighbourhood, stared at the crazy lady’s dog and made faces at the little kid who cries all day? Habbo Hotel Singapore and WhoLivesNearYou bring these eccentricities to a different level as they fuse neighbourhoods and hotels with networking and chatting.
Habbo Hotel Singapore
WhoLivesNearYou
Habbo Hotel Singapore
Check yourself into Habbo Hotel Singapore, a collection of chatrooms in a virtual hotel, started by Finland-based company, Sulake. The first ‘hotel’ opened its doors in Finland on Jan 2001, while the Singapore version was introduced last month, with added publicity courtesy of local TV station, MediaCorp TV, which advertises the site through its channels and magazines. Habbo Hotel uses animated pixel-style characters and decorated rooms in place of names and conventional chat windows.
Checking In
Pack your suitcase and bring along your best hat! Before you check in, you need to sign up and dress up your character/Habbo. You can even choose different hairstyles, hair colours, clothes and shoes. If you’re having a bad hair day, there’s always a baseball cap or bunny ears.
The hotel is split into public spaces and guest rooms. The public spaces include areas like the Main Lobby, an eatery in the form of Pizzeria and a dance floor at Club Massiva. You can create guest rooms and categorise them into game rooms, chat rooms and trading rooms among many others.
You can also decorate your rooms with furniture, or furni, in Habbo-speak. While the rooms can be generated for free, furni comes at a cost, in the form of credits. You can buy credits through various means, such as SMS or online (10 credits cost S$3.14). With these credits, you can purchase your own bear plaque, Christmas tree or barrel stool. The credits can also be used at the Habbo Lido, an outdoor spot with a pool where each dive requires a ticket, purchased using credits.
Meeting Guests
To break the ice when meeting people, your Habbo can wave with a simple click of the mouse. If you’re at Club Massiva, you can hit the dance function and your Habbo will jiggle about. These 2 functions are probably the coolest and they attract attention.
To communicate with a fellow Habbo, type in the text space. You can choose to communicate in whispers [text in italics] or shouts [bold text] too. The text will appear above your Habbo, but will disappear after some time, so there’re no logs of the chat. A nifty console allows you to add friends and send instant messages to them, as well as track their last visit to the hotel or current location within it.
Hotel Fun
Habbo Hotel seems to have many meaningless features. Your Habbo can get a pizza or coke by asking for it over the counters at the eateries. However, this doesn’t do anything other than present the appearance of a can or slice in your Habbo’s hand.
Entertainment by fellow Habbos is aplenty. There’re many guest rooms with games such as racing, in which you start by sitting on a chair, and when the race starts, you walk from your chair to another one at the end of the room and back again. The last person gets thrown out of the room.
The best feature in the hotel, for parents at least, is the way they censor vulgarities. Try saying the words ass, idiot and other unmentionables, and the word “Bobba”, Habbo’s version of “beep”, will show up in its place. The creators also noted that some users love to change their appearance every day, and have made allowances for that as well.
5-star Hotel
The site is no different from other Habbo Hotels across the globe, although MediaCorp TV’s presence is very apparent with a TV studio, as well as banners advertising the various channel websites, within the hotel. It would’ve been great to see other familiar traces of Singapore, like the Merlion or eateries serving kopi-o (black coffee without sugar) though. Or maybe even a casino?
However, the site is targeted at 14- to 18-year-olds, and can be a tad silly for the older crowd who prefer one-to-one conversations.
Habbo Hotel Singapore requires Shockwave.
WhoLivesNearYou is an innovative start-up by 2 young Singaporeans, allowing you to search for supper buddies or fellow football fanatics within your neighbourhood. It’s the perfect local portal for today’s tech-savvy teens to make friends with people who are within walking distance. With cutesy icons that remind you of the drink, Qoo, it immediately entices you in to find out who lives near you.
Moving In
Through a simple sign up with your postal code, the website pinpoints your dwelling, but reveals less specific information on your location to others. It’s a safety feature that keeps stalkers at bay, although some people get annoyed that their actual residence isn’t close to what is, in fact, revealed. One user used the space in his profile to clarify his exact location.
The website isn’t another Friendster rip-off as its database of users are divided based on postal codes, thus only revealing people “closest to you”, people 5 minutes away from you, and those within a 15-minute walk. So that female user in the “closest to you” segment could well be the auntie next door who loves karaoke or her cute daughter. Her profile, if it’s truthful, should shed some light on her identity.
Cool Neighbours
There’s also a function to add photos, but you’ll only be able to see other users’ photos if you’ve uploaded your own. This allows you to put a face to the name, and when you finally see them, you may well go “Oh!” – although that exclamation is most probably one of disappointment.
The profile also lists your occupation (although many users’ just read “slacker”), age, gender, as well as smoking and drinking habits. You can proclaim if you’re a social or regular drinker and/or smoker, and probably to find company that indulge in the same habit. You can also find clubbing mates who stay nearby, which makes sharing a cab home much cheaper. Better yet, find someone who drives! You indicate it in your profile if you’ve got a car or a bike. So now you know who’s the idiot who always revs his motorcycle in the middle of the night.
Still, your best bet to actually knowing your neighbour is through the detailed “about yourself” section. However, it’s up to users to decide how much they want to reveal, and sometimes, they simply don’t fill that section up. To get more intimate with your neighbours, you can send messages to them. If you want to give a shout out to everyone in the vicinity, there’s always the “Coffeeshop” forum.
Network ‘Hood
WhoLiveNearYou, co-created by Mok Wen Kai, a former UrbanWire designer, has an interesting concept, different from other networking websites like Friendster and MySpace, and it’s a local site unique to Singapore residents.
UrbanWire likes the big red heart icon that appears in your profile if you are attached, making sure potential suitors know that you’re off limits. However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to add neighbours to your list of friends for easier communication, like mass messaging.