eBuddy is a web & mobile messenger which supports various instant messaging services including Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo!, AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Facebook, and MySpace IM.

eBuddy is a web browser-based instant messaging service that originally started as e-Messenger in 2003. It combines MSN, AOL, Google Talk, ICQ, Facebook and MySpace IM into a single web based interface. It is also available via mobile phones, independent of carrier or device via WAP or mobile internet browser.

eBuddy is a privately-held company backed by Prime Technology Ventures and Lowland Capital Partners.

eBuddy is headquartered in Amsterdam and has a second, local office in London. The company launched a third and fourth, US office in San Francisco in April 2008.

History

Paulo Taylor is the inventor of eBuddy. The idea came to life when he made a bet with a friend in which he said he could get MSN to work on a mobile phone. Working full-time at an internet company, Paulo spent his after hours working on a mobile MSN application. After several weeks, he won the bet and uploaded the application on a server. It was here that visitors asked if he could make a web version of the application. As user traffic spurred, Paulo decided to take the idea to the next level.

On September 9th 2003, Paulo together with two partners created EverywhereMSN.com. Microsoft however claimed the domain name and shortly after on December 4th 2003 the domain was changed to e-messenger.net. On May 1st 2004, e-Messenger became incorporated. On June 1st 2006, e-Messenger was renamed to eBuddy.

Features

eBuddy offers a secure login option. Users can also indicate if they wish to sign on invisibly. The chat client includes a tab mode setting to differentiate chat windows, similar to tabbed web browsing. The beta version released in June 2007 supports multiple IM networks in one interface.

Mobile

The mobile instant messaging version (eBuddy Lite), compatible with Cell Phones, PDAs, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS works on devices that support WAP or xHTML.

In June 2007, a Java ME client (eBuddy Mobile) was released that is claimed to work on the top 600 cellular phones used worldwide.

iPhone

On July 13th eBuddy released an Alpha version for the iPhone. It is based on the same AJAX platform as the Beta web version. Somewhere at the start of 2008, the eBuddy iPhone version started to point to their Lite Messenger. An optimized version of the Lite Messenger is provided to iPhone users.

Unsupported features

* QQ Protocol
* Skinning – Users cannot customize application appearance.
* Webcam interface – Users cannot utilize a webcam.
* File Transfer – Users cannot send or receive files.

Links

• eBuddy homepage