Teen bastion of style and sex tips, Seventeen Magazine, is signed up with Habbo.com to create an online interactive world for its readers. Break out the virtual lip gloss.
According to Media Week, Seventeen will supply Habbo with articles, quizzes and polls for the MMO while Habbo will host a Seventeen Beauty Salon section where readers can get beauty tips from editors. This is a step up from Seventeen's first foray into virtual worlds over its digital issue released via MTV's virtual world, Virtual MTV.
Julie Hochheiser, a senior Web editor at Seventeen, said the magazine hoped to learn from the Habbo partnership how it can grow its audience through virtual worlds. Habbo said 20,000 users have already signed up to a Seventeen group on the site since the partnership became active a month ago.
I started reading Seventeen when I was 13. When I actually turned 17, I graduated to Cosmopolitan. I don't know that I would have stuck around longer if there was an MMO to go with my monthly dose of prom dressed I'd never buy, but I do know that I would have had a lot of fun taking those personality quizzes if the actual outcome of the quiz changed the way my avatar looked. Or if there'd been some web-specific stuff, like a fashion design competition.
"We definitely learned exclusivity is important," Hochheiser said, adding that Seventeen may use Habbo to sell virtual items as well as subscriptions to the magazine.
You can check out Habbo here. Be careful, though. For some reason, Firefox flips out when I try to create an avatar.
Seventeen, Habbo Partner for Virtual World Deal [Media Week]