Markku Ignatius appointed as an acting CEO

[xxMATTGxx]

LaFontaine steps down. Markku Ignatius appointed as an acting CEO

Paul LaFontaine leaves the company at the turn of the year.

“We thank Paul for his leadership during the past year and wish him well for the future” said Mikael Rönnblad, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sulake Corporation.

“Markku Ignatius has been appointed as the acting CEO of the Company” stated Rönnblad. “Markku is an industry veteran with over 6 years experience in the management team of the company, so we trust that under his leadership the company will enjoy stable and smooth transitioning into the future” said Rönnblad.

“To me, the story of Habbo has always been a story about the Community” said Ignatius. “Our company’s strength and success derives from the strength and success of our Community. In the coming year we continue listening to our Community and learning from the Community. We will keep on both providing our users with the classic Habbo features so loved by our Community as well as continue developing new extensions to the Habbo experience, such as the recently launched Game Center and mobile application.” Ignatius stated.""

Source: http://www.sulake.com/press/releases/lafontaine-steps-down.-markku-ignatius-appointed-as-an-acting-ceo/

They have also updated their management page to reflect with the changes:

http://www.sulake.com/company/management/

[sex]

did he work at sulake before?
lol at the statement "the story of habbo has always been community" i doubt he said that

edit; he worked as legal

the new person should do a mass un-ban of all accounts, fresh start etc

[xxMATTGxx]

did he work at sulake before?
lol at the statement "the story of habbo has always been community" i doubt he said that

Yeah he's been at Sulake for a while. His previous role was EVP Legal & Corporate Communications according to LinkedIn.

[Andii]

Interesting I wonder if he will be good and not be a total noob like paul making stupid decisions and stupid ideas basically didn't do anything right

[Pigperson]

No idea how good he is so we'll see :) I only just realised how non-English the Sulake team are lololol.

Will

[Lewis]

If he's worked at habbo/sulake since 2006, he might actually know how to control habbo! :)

[Red]

I looked him up a couple of weeks ago. He looks nice and he doesn't use twitter woo.

[xxMATTGxx]

No idea how good he is so we'll see :) I only just realised how non-English the Sulake team are lololol.

Will

Well it is a Finnish company lmao.

[zombies]

Yay. We can only hope for the best.

[:Markster:]

I looked him up a couple of weeks ago. He looks nice and he doesn't use twitter woo.

Why'd that a good thing? That just means that we are in the dark about any updates and to be honest that's what Paul did well, he communicated with the community and kept us up to date, providing us with a person to contact about questions that the customer support just couldn't be bothered to answer... Just saying it's nice that, as the news are not yet reintroduced and the Habbo twitter only really talks about events that are going on and promotions and less actual communication with the community...

[Abdicators]

I looked him up a couple of weeks ago. He looks nice and he doesn't use twitter woo.

@vopatti

[Red]

@vopatti
Yea but his last tweet was months ago! and his first comment is something about not embracing the tech revolution lmao

---------- Post added 02-01-2013 at 02:55 PM ----------


Why'd that a good thing? That just means that we are in the dark about any updates and to be honest that's what Paul did well, he communicated with the community and kept us up to date, providing us with a person to contact about questions that the customer support just couldn't be bothered to answer... Just saying it's nice that, as the news are not yet reintroduced and the Habbo twitter only really talks about events that are going on and promotions and less actual communication with the community...

And why do you have to use twitter or Facebook to keep up to date with the community? For one its hypocritical because if we talked about twitter on habbo it would result in a 24 hr-month ban. It was untidy having updates spread amongst the blog, and other social medias. News should be centralised and updates put back on to the habbo homepage. Paul did not communicate well. He picked a few rubbish ideas that no one cared about to answer and ignored all the other comments or blocked about 3/4 of the community. It worked fine with years without communicating directly with the ceo.

[Samantha]

It'll be good to see what differences he had from Paul, maybe after his time as Acting CEO they could appoint him the proper one if he does a good job. Well, we shouldn't have to rely on social media sites to find out updates, as Red; pointed out if we mentioned either of them on the game we'd be banned. Paul also said articles would make a return, I hope that Markku will decide that this is another way forward even though it shouldn't have gone back to that stage.

[Tom]

It'll be good for someone who's been working at Sulake for a while - seeing all the changes - to actually get chosen to become the CEO. He says:

"In the coming year we continue listening to our Community and learning from the Community. We will keep on both providing our users with the classic Habbo features so loved by our Community"

So surely that's a good sign of things to come (what everyone keeps moaning about and wanting) maybe? We'll just have to wait and see.

[Pigperson]

Well it is a Finnish company lmao.

Yeh ino, I just for some reason expected there to be English people for all their English announcements :P

Will

[xxMATTGxx]

Yeh ino, I just for some reason expected there to be English people for all their English announcements :P

Will

English is a language that is well used in a lot of countries around the world, so I wouldn't be surprised if not all or nearly all of the staff who are Finnish could read and write English quite well. Although back when it was just Habbo UK we did have specific English/British staff.

[karter]

GOOD RIDDANCE OMG

---------- Post added 02-01-2013 at 09:14 PM ----------


Why'd that a good thing? That just means that we are in the dark about any updates and to be honest that's what Paul did well, he communicated with the community and kept us up to date, providing us with a person to contact about questions that the customer support just couldn't be bothered to answer... Just saying it's nice that, as the news are not yet reintroduced and the Habbo twitter only really talks about events that are going on and promotions and less actual communication with the community...

Communication is not done by signing up on a godamn website which only allows 180 character post limit. Kept to date? I hope you know that most of his tweets were about features which had been released many days before. He was in delusion that all the updates led by him are fantastic. Only those people who were appreciating him (god knows why) would get replies to their tweet. Keeping in touch with a bunch of people who lick your ass is not communication. Most of the people in habbo were in the dark about the new updates and stuff. Even the blog which was shown off so much during the April-June period was abandoned later on. Most of his tweets were lies anyways (like when he said that events will not be 1c per but they were?).

Yes, what a nice thing he did.

[Floxed]

Does anyone know his IM name yet? I thought it was just Markku, but I'm not sure. In .nl there's a Staff named markuski, is it possible that's him?

Edit: I think I found him in .com, is it markku112?

[:Markster:]

GOOD RIDDANCE OMG

---------- Post added 02-01-2013 at 09:14 PM ----------



Communication is not done by signing up on a godamn website which only allows 180 character post limit. Kept to date? I hope you know that most of his tweets were about features which had been released many days before. He was in delusion that all the updates led by him are fantastic. Only those people who were appreciating him (god knows why) would get replies to their tweet. Keeping in touch with a bunch of people who lick your ass is not communication. Most of the people in habbo were in the dark about the new updates and stuff. Even the blog which was shown off so much during the April-June period was abandoned later on. Most of his tweets were lies anyways (like when he said that events will not be 1c per but they were?).

Yes, what a nice thing he did.

Alright i see your point and Paul didn't do a good job, what i was referring to was the thread i read on hxf a while back saying that a person had gone to Paul with their problem and he had answered to it and tried to help, even though it's not part of his job description. I see the problem with Twitter but at the same time, if it was to be used correctly it would be a powerful tool. "Keeping in touch with a bunch of people who lick your ass is not communication." This i just don't get... So in that you are just calling people who tweet to Paul ass kissers? Also in response to "Only those people who were appreciating him would get replies" why should he answer to tweets that criticize him? And like i said it's not part of his job description to deal with problem solving, that's what the customer support is for but he still has done it in a few cases...
As far as most of his tweets being lies, i'd like to introduce you to a bit of project management: the system development life cycle is, in most cases, a circular idea. Refer to the image HERE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle). Now this shows that during the project some things might have been considered "unprofitable" as Habbo is as much of a business as any other and Paul may have prematurely tweeted something that the people in the background might have changed their minds about, but calling them lies is a bit far-fetched.

[cameron354]

Does anyone know his IM name yet? I thought it was just Markku, but I'm not sure. In .nl there's a Staff named markuski, is it possible that's him?

Edit: I think I found him in .com, is it markku112?

It's RomanVopat
https://twitter.com/Puhekupla_Staff/status/286513001257897984

[karter]

"Keeping in touch with a bunch of people who lick your ass is not communication." This i just don't get... So in that you are just calling people who tweet to Paul ass kissers?

Pretty much what I meant, like I said..whenever he tweeted it was to insult someone, replying to an appreciation filled tweet, or to reply to fansite representatives. I haven't been on his twitter page in 2 months but if you scroll down a little you can actually see that he actually tweeted to a certain bunch of people (I will call them suckups because I am entitled to my opinion)


"Only those people who were appreciating him would get replies" why should he answer to tweets that criticize him?

Why shouldn't he? As a company representative he should accept all opinions (leaving the people who throw abuses at him, obviously). I believe this guy named Mathias from Habbo.dk was blocked when he said that guardian system was not working and paul's reply was something like "your opinion not needed" I am not on my computer right now but I can find you numerous tweets in which he is either extremely rude or being foolish. I found a couple from an older thread on habbox

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v319/_pobodys_nerfect_/ScreenShot2012-10-26at011139_zps34bbfb78.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v319/_pobodys_nerfect_/ScreenShot2012-10-26at005606_zps473ac174.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v319/_pobodys_nerfect_/ScreenShot2012-10-26at172535_zps0f972256.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v319/_pobodys_nerfect_/ScreenShot2012-10-26at005153_zpsd3b32223.png


It is expected from a representative of a company to be calm and responsible not rude and snobbish. Aren't these people only trying to help by giving their feedback, how can a person be so distasteful and disregard them. He should try to handle criticism because all the things he did were worth the criticism. It is funny that 13-14 year olds were acting more mature than him. Oh once a person was talking to him about a safety issue and he said that habbo users were the most inflexible hidebound group he had ever seen..How many more examples do you need to understand that this man was not worth his job. My heart does not melt after knowing that he tried to help a person with whatever problem he had because most of the time he chose to ignore the real issues and insult habbos instead.

I'll try to find more tweets and show it to you because these are just not enough.

[Shorty]

Weird they didn't mention Markus (CTO) leaving who left at the same time as Paul, who's been at Sulake since 2004. They've removed him from the management page though.

[Kardan]

Weird they didn't mention Markus leaving who left at the same time as Paul, who's been at Sulake since 2004.

Why would they? They didn't say farewell to the other 60+ staff that had to leave Sulake last year. They've only mentioned Paul because he's the CEO. Mark didn't get a mention either, and he's been there from 2001.

[BigtimeRyan]

He looks good! :D And he's been at sulake since 2006

[GoldenMerc]

Good luck to him! Big step in his career and a nice milestone i'd imagine

[GommeInc]

Let's hope he understand online communities and isn't a corporate drone looking at his pocket book and wallet all the time, or Twitter...

[Faceless]

Just have to wait and see what this person brings

[xxMATTGxx]

For people who haven't checked his twitter (top to bottom):

http://www.mattgarner.net/upload/images/2013/01/04/5QL19.png

[Red]

For people who haven't checked his twitter (top to bottom):

http://www.mattgarner.net/upload/images/2013/01/04/5QL19.png

I LIKE HIM ALREADY!!!

[Aaron]

For people who haven't checked his twitter (top to bottom):

http://www.mattgarner.net/upload/images/2013/01/04/5QL19.png

Well that's a good start.. his not going down the bad road, wonder what he has in store for us. :)

[Aiden]

Good luck dude with CEOing or whatever.

[LiquidLuck.]

Lets hope he does better than Paul..