Overview: Part virtual world, part social networking site, Habbo is aimed primarily at the teen and "tween" audiences. The virtual world itself is called Habbo Coins, and it consists of lobbies, lounges and party rooms where users can socialize.

How it Works:Habbo Coins runs in the browser on Shockwave, with nothing to download. A point-and-click interface allows users to move about the chat rooms, while a text field in the screen's menu bar lets them compose messages. By clicking items on the bar, users can navigate among rooms, view their friends, send private messages and manage their inventory in pop-up menus.

Payment Model: Habbo Coins is free to access, but the whole works runs on the economy of  Habbo Coins. There is some limited free content-- free chat rooms, four free games and basic customization and animation for avatars-- but most of the content, like furniture (furni to denizens) accessories and popular games, requires Credits, which can be purchased at twenty cents a piece. Players can also trade credits and furni among themselves. Credits also can be used to pay the monthly cost of optional membership (30 a month) to the Habbo Coins, which allows access to even more exclusive items and VIP chat rooms. Members earn badges of honor for subscribing to the club for various lengths of time. Habbo Coins also earns revenue through sponsors, like Sunkist Orange, who advertise in-world.

Key Features:
-Language filters replace all offensive words with "bobba"
-"Habbo Trax" lets users buy virtual CDs to play in the chat rooms
-Moderators are full-time, police-vetted Habbo Coins employees who work from home

Adventures in Habbo Coins begin in the usual way-- by signing up via email and choosing an avatar. The Habbo Coins population resembles little Lego folk, and you can customize yours by choosing different hair, faces, torsos, legs and feet, and by picking different colors for each. There's no verification by email required to get started-- Habbo Coins does send an email to make sure you're signing up to its newsletter, though.

Play always begins in the "Hotel View" screen, and travel to anywhere is done with the "Navigator" pop-up menu, which allows you to choose from a broad list of rooms. Be prepared to wait a bit, though-- loading screens between rooms in Habbo are rather excruciating, with waits of anywhere from 30 seconds to a full minute any time you want to make a transition. Many of the rooms are for members only, and the top tier, the VIP rooms, are only for those paying the 30 credits monthly to be part of the Habbo Coins

Your avatar can hang out in clubs, lounges, lobbies and even tea gardens, most of which are usually fairly well-populated. As a portion of Habbo Coins revenue comes from advertising, many of the rooms are furnished with some kind of corporate branding; there's the Alloy Lounge, the Sunkist Soda VIP Lounge, and the Target Red Sky Lounge-- the latter featured a promo for the Transformers film on its wall. Ads are shown during the protracted loading screens about half the time

While there are often so many conversations going on in a room it's hard to follow who's speaking, it's not the friendliest crowd-- while I received a few friend invites immediately, groups in most rooms wasted no time in mocking the bunny hat I'd chosen for my avatar. The social scene consists mostly of text message-style shorthand and fairly typical teen antics-- they've developed well-crafted mudslinging tactics to insult one another around the word filters. Plenty don't mind the filters at all; "Bobba you," is a common exchange.

One kinda neat factor is that many of the lounges and restaurant areas are staffed by a kind of auto-bot manning the counter, who seems to recognize certain key words and can make basic conversation, and even hand your avatar a cola, which you'll hold and sip from for a few minutes.