At the Virtual Worlds Forum Europe, running October 23rd through the 26th in London, Habbo founder Sampo Karjalainen of Sulake Corp. said that the site has had 80 million avatars created since its 2000 launch in Finland.

Karjalainen, speaking as part of a panel called "Kidalicious: Are Kids and Teenagers the Future for Virtual Worlds?", said that when Habbo first launched, he hadn't necessarily intended for it to become as large as it has -- spreading to 31 countries across five continents. The company says that 75,000 members join daily with 6 million monthly uniques, and that the average Habbo user, who is a teenager between the ages of 11 and 17, spends 32 minutes per visit on the site.

Said Karjalainen, “When we first created the idea behind Habbo, it wasn’t our intention that it should explicitly be an online community for teenagers or that it would run for so long! The first version of Habbo was a hobby project that myself and my partner, Aapo Kyrölä, were working on and one on which we would only focus for a month or two. But as the community grew, based solely on word of mouth, we of course decided not to take the service down."

He continued, "In 2000, when we officially launched Habbo in Finland , we realized that the majority of the community consisted of teenagers. On that basis, we took a decision to continue to develop the site but only for teens. Now seven years on with 80 million characters created, its clear that teenagers get more out of virtual world experiences and that we made the right decision!”