EBuddy raises nearly $10 million, focusing on mobile web chat
Web and mobile-based messaging service eBuddy, based in Amsterdam, has raised $9.6 million from Dutch venture firm Prime Technology Ventures.
In the past, we’ve compared Meebo and eBuddy as rival companies that are trying to let you IM with anyone else on any IM platform — AOL, Yahoo, etc. This past year, the two companies’ products have diverged, somewhat, as each has focused on different ways of building on its respective user bases.
EBuddy has developed its mobile chat services for its 12 million monthly unique users (the company’s internal numbers) spread around the world — in many countries people use mobile phones in place of computers. The company plans to use the funding to in part continue building out its mobile services.
Meebo, meanwhile, has focused on building widgets for the web, seen by the explosion of the Meebo Rooms chat room widget on other sites — the company now has more than 24 million users, most of whom use Meebo within another site. It has also recently launched a developer platform, although the success of that has yet to be seen.
EBuddy’s latest round was provided by Dutch venture firm Prime Technology Ventures. It previously raised $6.3 million from Dutch firm Lowland Capital Partners in the fall of 2006 (our coverage).
Also, note that eBuddy is one of relatively few startups to receive funding from European VCs — see our previous story on that, here.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.
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