Bloody Kids!

kathfisch

oops_a_daisy wrote:

and here http://www.ft.com/cms/s/26b90322-f0c9-11da-9338-0000779e2340.html a report from the Financial Times:mad:

from that site:

“What we learnt from Habbo is, properly presented, people will buy digital content,” says Mr Maloney.

At the moment, 90 per cent of the the sites revenues come from users paying for furniture or to play games. But advertisers are warming to the concept.

Benchmark reckons advertising will soon account for 30-40 per cent of revenue spearheaded by digital billboards in the online world for brands such as Apple and Nike.

For all of the sites, attracting advertisers is not the only problem. If the product placement is too brash or uncool they risk destroying the community, says Mr Maloney.

When it comes to younger teenagers paying for online content, there is an obvious problem with premium text messages and parents’ credit cards.

The solution to open up this market, says Mr Maloney, is the roll-out of pre-paid credit cards.

He is confident that millions of users can be translated into millions of pounds.

How scary is that :eek:

Those prepaid credit cards cost a fortune anyway, but I guess at least the kids would have to use their own money and would eventually run out. Its awful that kids are being targetted like this (although I shouldn't be surprised really).

Is anyone thinking of taking this issue up/making a complaint etc?

rchddap1

Have been following this thread and think that we need to point this particular site out to Martin. Maybe he will have an idea on how to sort this 'issue' out once and for all.

Toto

I have sent Martin an email on the subject. I hope he can help, this site needs closing!

kevin_M

i myself am a very active online gamer. and i have just been playing the game for 10 mins. i would perfer for my daughter for me to pay a fee and play something like toonland or whatever its called.

cannot beleve the payments that it will accept. shows its more geared towards kids than adults. mobile phone topups, phoneline topups etc

newleaf

My neice came to stay a couple of years ago, she was about 13/14 at the time, and I noticed whenever I came into the room when she was on the computer she started being all furtive. She has a mild degree of learning disability and is very naive, she also finds it very difficult to make friends in normal situations due to her physical awkwardness (suffers from dyspraxia). After she'd gone to bed I checked the history to see where she'd been surfing and it was all Habbo Hotel. I did what another poster did, logged myself on as a teenage girl, and observed for a while. It was very clear to me that the place was crawling with paedophiles. There was a lot of sex talk going on, some of it extremely explicit. Next morning I spoke to her about it, and said I had been looking at Habbo and how shocked I was at the 'rude' things I'd seen. She seemed quite surprised and assured me she didn't do 'rude talk', she just liked choosing the characters. When she went back home I told her mum - who was horrified, as she'd previously had a look as well and deemed it safe territory. Needless to say Habbo was banned from then on.

Toto

Wow, that's scary.

I am doing everything I can to get this site some media attention. I might even approach the tabloids seeing as they run the country LOL. My main concern has switched from the morals of the financial side to plain child safety. My time in the site has disgusted me.

Martin's office replied saying they had forwarded my mail, they aren't sure what they can do but they do agree something needs doing.

And it does!

LookingAhead

Toto, I can't really add anything to the responses you got, but I had to say, your story of the rave in the garage cracked me up! 250 people! My word....!

elona

Toto

If you or Martin want to get up a petition then I would be glad to sign it.

kathfisch

elona wrote:

Toto

If you or Martin want to get up a petition then I would be glad to sign it.

Absolutely, me too!

Thefunkygibbons

Thanks for the warning

At the moment the kids like Runscape but thay follow the fashions in school

This one sounds horrible