IRC-Galleria

Sulake acquired IRC-Galleria from Dynamoid in April 2007¹. This Finnish, locally highly succesful networking service with branches in Germany, Russia, Estonia and Lithuania at the time, was believed to complement Sulake’s portfolio, and to be a chance for the service to spread globally. Beta attempts for international versions popped up in France (Cmalife), Australia (Luupi) and Spain (Alacara).

At same time, IRC-Galleria got a facelift, along with styling the international sites. Lots of things, including logo, based on the work of Riikka Kurki, Senior Graphic Designer, Campaigns from March 2008 - November 2009 at Sulake. A look in her portfolio shows a lot of colorful campaigns. 2008/-09 though, slowly the international sites disappeared, with only Finland and Germany left. After that, silence. Finnish service still going strong, we believe.

Not seeing much development anymore, and with Habbo getting Facebook integrated (a direct competitor of IRC-Galleria), one could see IRC-Galleria was not a priority anymore. Sulake let go of IRC-Galleria, March 2011, selling it to its management.

It’s sort of (read: only if we wanna see the economics anyway) interesting what this deal and getting out of it did do to the balance (as acquisition numbers were quite impressive). Probably some financial loss, but also lessons learned. That over here: Economics.

¹Sulake press release;