History
The story of Sulake started in 1999, when two young
Finnish guys, Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä, made an online application called Mobiles Disco
for their friends' band. Mobiles Disco was purely a free-time project, but, once launched on the
internet, this multi-user online community became a huge success gathering users around the world.
The first Habbo community was born.
Habbo becomes an international brand
With the help from Finnish advertising agency Taivas, Sampo and Aapo started to develop the idea
of a multiplayer online game further. Soon the company Sulake was founded and the first virtual
community, Hotelli Kultakala (Hotel Goldfish), was launched in Finland in August 2000. After the
huge success of the first Habbo launch, Habbo Hotel was opened in the UK as well and Habbo was
officially born as a brand. Two new communities were launched in 2001 and four in 2003, while at
the same time the technical platform was re-built and the concept further developed.
Millions of teenagers get attracted to Habbo
During 2004, Sulake as a company and Habbo Hotel as a community chain grew dramatically. By
the end of 2004 there were 16 online communities on four different continents and Sulake had over
160 employees.
In 2005 and 2006, Habbo further strengthened its presence around the world and currently
there are localized Habbo communities in 32 countries on six continents. Teenagers around the world
have created over 103 million Habbo characters and 9.5 million unique visitors visit Habbo every
month.
Sulake takes a step towards social networking
Sulake’s aim is to build Habbo into a new type of youth brand, which is anchored in the world’s
largest online youth community. The Habbo brand has already been extended to include mobile games
and content, animation as well as merchandising products.
Sulake aims to broaden the company’s product portfolio with other kinds of game and community concepts for different target audiences. In April 2007 Sulake acquired Dynamoid, a company behind IRC-Galleria, the leading social networking service in Finland. Sulake’s aim is to internationalize the extremely successful local service utilizing its current global infrastructure built for Habbo.
