Business Week published an article about teen social networking site / online game Habbo, explaining how they use the game for market research purposes. The site claims to have over 76 million avatars created as opposed to the 4 million Second Life has.

The research project, mostly for tracking teen trends and buying habits, was ran among 42,409 respondents who spent an average of 33 minutes answering questions. The incentive? Habbo credits to spend in the virtual world… sweet

So why is this cool? (apart from the retro pixelated aesthetics of the site) Well, although far from being a viable way of interviewing adults and the population in general, it is certainly a great way of engaging teenagers mostly because they are in their environment and it is not that clear for them what is actually being done. For them, they are just being asked questions by other avatars.

And… these teenagers will eventually grow up, how are we going to talk to them then?

Read the article here…

Mining Virtual Worlds for Market Research [Business Week]