I'm waiting to report on more of the major names in 7th mass media to reveal profits. Mark Curtis at Flirtomatic was just speaking at Forum Oxford last week and said they were close to, but not yet profitable,. But here is the grand-daddy of them all, the quintessential "make your money on mobile" online service. Habbo Hotel has reported its 2008 figures. And they are good:
Now as many major internet online social networks struggle in making money, from MySpace to Skype, look at Habbo Hotel numbers:
Since launch in 2003, 129 milion habbo characters have been created in localized Habbo communities in 31 countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, Malaysia, Philippines, Spain, UK and the USA. The teenager social networking service has over 90% of its users within the age bracet of 13-18. They have 11.7 million active users any given month.
Now to the real numbers you want to read. They earned 50 million Euros (74 M USD) last year in revenues and made a profit of 4.8 M Euros. Ebitda profit margin of 9.6%. You read that right. A profit margin for an online social networking service with no subscription fee and where the majority of the income is NOT advertising.
WHO SAYS YOU CAN'T MAKE MONEY ON SOCIAL NETWORKING TODAY????
You just have to be smart about it. Learn where the money is (in mobile, obviously, 7th Mass Media as Habbo Hotel was the world's pioneer to prove the point years ago) and if you need a fast short-cut into the best ideas of how to monetize mobile social networks, my Pearls Vol 2 has 50 case studies of commercial success worldwide on mobile social networking. Obvioiusly Habbo is one of those case studies in Pearls Vol 2.
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