The IRC-Galleria Team Builds Ninchat, A New Communication Tool For Teams
How does your team communicate at work? There are a lot of team communication tools out there, but check out Helsinki-based Ninchat, a nicely designed and accessible browser-based chat client. Ninchat is free to use and can be used for any sort of chat communication, but they're targeting the product towards companies that need secure team communication that's backed up in the cloud.
When logging on you'll notice it looks like an online version of IRC. Ninchat CEO Ville Mujunen calls IRC "beautiful" and "impossible to kill", but sees value in adding features and running it in a browser and through the cloud. Ninchat offers a secure backlog, history search, notifications when your name is mentioned, and video chat to get people communicating more efficiently, as well as mobile use as a HTML5 app (with a native Android and iOS apps eventually coming).
Less E-mail And Fewer Meetings With Teamvisio
E-mail and meetings are sucking productivity even from the most dynamic and agile of companies. The founders of Somia Reality, a Finnish startup, know this from experience and looked to innovate in this space to reduce the clutter. The founders of the company are also the founders of IRC-Gallery, a hugely popular online social network that has seen its brightest days for the time time being. Regardless of rising competition from the likes of Facebook and other social networking services, IRC-Gallery continues to generate enough revenue to keep Somia Reality ramen profitable to sustain a team of 9 to develop their new service, Teamvisio, further.
Teamvisio is heavily influenced by the ageless communication service, IRC, that is mostly used by developers and other online afficionados. Teamvisio takes IRC further though. Where as IRC users are limited to text only, Teamvisio adds audio and video to allow more depth to conversations. However, the basic use case of Teamvisio is very similar to that of IRC - both are considered to be the most useful when used in the background.
Sulake Revenue Grows +20%, Sells IRC-Gallery
Sulake has today announced their figures for fiscal year 2010, as well as some changes to their ownership of online properties. In 2010, Sulake turned over 56,2 million euros, which is over 20% more than in 2009. EBITDA for 2010 was at 5,4 million euros profit for the year was at 1,6 million euros. In addition to announcing their financials, Sulake has stated that they have today sold IRC-Gallery to Somia Reality Oy, which is run by a few former IRC-Gallery employees and funded by Lifeline Ventures and a few individual investors.
