eBuddy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| eBuddy | |
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 Application screenshot |
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| Genre | Instant Messaging |
| Website | ebuddy.com |
eBuddy is a web & mobile messenger which supports various instant messaging services including Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! , AIM, Google Talk and MySpace IM.
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[edit] General
eBuddy is a web browser-based instant messaging service originally started as e-Messenger in 2003. It combines AOL, Google Talk, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo Messenger into a single web based interface. It is also available via mobile phone, 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, US office in San Francisco in April 2008.
[edit] 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 Everywhere-MSN.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.
[edit] 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.
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[edit] Mobile
The mobile instant messaging version (eBuddy Lite), compatible with Cell Phones, PDA's, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS works only on devices that support WAP or xHTML.
In June 2007, a J2ME client (eBuddy Mobile) was released that is claimed to work on the top 600 cellular phones used worldwide.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Updates and modifications
- Integration of AJAX into E-Messenger in September 2005.
- August 2006 US server platform established.
- June 16 2007 release of new mobile J2ME client & new beta web IM version.
- August 22 2007 release of MySpace IM for the beta web version.
[edit] Achievements
January 2007, eBuddy won the "Best Dutch App" award at the Dutch Web2.0 Awards organized by Blue Ace.
March 19th 2007, eBuddy in Red Herrings Top 100 Europe 2007 list organized by Red Herring
August 2007, the ebuddy website's URL is blacklisted by Microsoft: it is added to a list of strings that cannot be sent using their Windows Messenger IM client [1].
December 2007, eBuddy makes Google Zeitgeist being the 7th fastest rising search term world wide.
[edit] External links
- eBuddy homepage
- ebuddy review
[edit] References
- Centre Networks interview CEO eBuddy
- Release of new mobile J2ME client + beta web IM version
- iPhone support
- MySpace IM support
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