Customers in China were redirected to other Habbo communities. The challenging Chinese market and high operational costs led to the decision of closing the service. In August 2007, Habbo's Chinese community closed down temporarily, the first time a Habbo website has closed. In May 2006, the service, along with its domain names, were changed from (.co.uk. It has since been expanded to over 31 countries in five continents, including Hotelli Kultakala in Finland which was made into a Habbo Hotel and has been invested in by venture capitalists. The next hotel was launched in Switzerland a few months later, in four languages. It featured a new credits system with community and safety features. The new hotel exited beta a few weeks afterwards, aimed at the teenage market, with marketing and payment partners in place, run from a HQ in London. By the end of January 2001, Habbo Hotel had been launched in beta mode. Kyrölä, Karjalainen and Dee Edwards, an entrepreneur from the UK, wanted to create an international business based on the virtual hotel concept, drafting a plan in Autumn 2000, and raised finance. It launched in August 2000 on the ISP's web portal. Hotel Goldfish) with a small team of developers. After having been contracted to design a virtual game and chat called Lumisota (Snow Wars) for a Finnish internet service provider, they were contracted for another project. It was a virtual chat room running on Kyrölä's Fuse technology. Habbo stemmed from a 1999 hobby project by creative designer Sampo Karjalainen and technologist Aapo Kyrölä entitled Mobiles Disco, for a Finnish band. Users on Habbo can create a character and build and design rooms, chat with other players, take care of virtual pets, create and play games and complete quests. The game boasts more than 800,000 monthly active users, reported in January 2021. As of October 2020, they have reportedly accumulated 316 million avatars in the game since the game launched in the summer of 2000. In the Summer of 2020, Habbo celebrated their 20th birthday with a two month long anniversary campaign and boosted user numbers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since August 2012, more than 273 million avatars have been registered with an average of 600,000 visitors per month. Founded in 2000, Habbo has expanded to nine online communities (or "hotels"), with users from more than 150 countries. It is owned and operated by Sulake, a Finnish company. Habbo (formerly Habbo Hotel) is an online community aimed at teens and young adults.
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