Exclusive - eBuddy, the Dutch company that enables millions of people worldwide to communicate with each other on the Web and a wide range of mobile phones, says it’s the first independent messaging app to exceed 250 million user accounts.

A lot of those new users are people who use Android-powered phones, eBuddy says, positing that growth on that particular platform is up 300 percent year-over-year.

Of course, not all of those 250 million user accounts are active, but you’d be surprised to learn how many are – at least according to eBuddy, who says 163 million accounts are active on an annual basis, and that users of eBuddy Messenger currently spend more than ten billion minutes per month engaged with the app.

Facebook Chat also proves to be popular among eBuddy’s users, which have downloaded a total of 130 million apps to date: Facebook’s IM service usage is up 144 percent year-over-year.

The Dutch company recently debuted eBuddy XMS, a free real-time messaging app for smartphones, but didn’t provide any specific statistics about it.

Founded in 2003 and based in Amsterdam with offices in London, Singapore and San Francisco, eBuddy is a privately-held company backed by Prime Ventures and Lowland Capital Partners.

The seemingly obligatory infographic that comes with the announcement:

eBuddy, the Dutch company that enables millions of people worldwide to communicate with each other on the Web and a wide range of mobile phones, is today introducing a brand new application for iPhone and Android. With the app, dubbed eBuddy XMS, the company aims to go “beyond SMS” with a free realtime messaging tool that functions across a range of platforms (BlackBerry coming soon).

eBuddy believes it can add value to the fast growing mobile messaging apps category based on its wealth of digital messaging expertise and by focusing primarily on the user experience.

Already, the company enables over 30 million monthly active users to send and receive more than 17 billion messages, which they say is an advantage to service providers that are not used to such scale in terms of being able to deliver consistent reliability and speed.

I wish I could say you can try it out right now, but the app launch isn’t worldwide but limited to users in The Netherlands and Australia, at least for the time being. The company promises to add more features to the service and roll out internationally in the coming weeks.

I gave the beta product a whirl, though, and I believe it definitely has some potential.

After installation, the eBuddy XMS application will let you add friends via Facebook or by invitations sent via SMS and email. The app offers personalization options for messages, including more than 100 funky emoticons.

With tools like eBuddy XMS (and alternatives such as Kik, WhatsApp, Pingchat or even the likes of ChompSMS, TextPlus, Grouped{in}, Beluga, GroupMe and admittedly loads of other messaging applications), who really needs SMS anymore?

eBuddy thus joins the ranks of Facebook as the second mobile app to exceed 50 million downloads on GetJar.

Notably, the milestone was reached less than 15 months after hitting 10m downloads.

GetJar, which dubs itself the ‘Walmart of mobile apps’, says it is currently the second largest app store worldwide, after Apple’s iTunes. It offers more than 65,000 mobile applications across all major handsets and platforms to consumers in more than 200 countries.

The company recently launched a mobile advertising distribution platform that offers developers the opportunity to bid for premium catalogue placement per download in GetJar’s store and distribution channels. App developers and publishers can set their own maximum daily budgets, and only pay when consumers successfully download the advertised application.

eBuddy says this pay-per-download solution helped making GetJar its number one external source for downloads, particularly in key countries like India (GetJar’s solution allows developers to geo-target campaigns by country, handset or even carrier), although most of its growth is organic.

The app has been downloaded by users in more than 203 countries, the company adds – a testament to the global footprint of Nokia.

The app has garnered over 930 reviews on the Ovi Store and a 4/5 star rating. Alternatives on Nokia’s Ovi Store include Nimbuzz and fring.

That said, eBuddy is easily one of the most popular mobile instant messaging applications in the world – it enables millions of users around the world to chat for free in one, aggregated interface across all major IM networks including AIM, Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Hyves, ICQ, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.

In total, eBuddy’s mobile applications have been downloaded over 75 million times, and more than 15 million unique mobile users access eBuddy every month, sending over 7.5 billion messages.

The company, backed by 11.5 million Euros in venture capital from Lowland Capital Partners and Prime Technology Ventures, markets a Web-based social network and instant messaging aggregator that enables people to sign in to their service once and stay connected to people through various platforms in one single interface where all of them are centralized.

It also offers a number of ways for people to use the service on their mobile phones, through a mobile web service, a Java-based messenger client and applications for iPhone and Android.

(Keep reading if you want to try their premium iPhone app for free, by the way)

Rueb informs me that the J2ME client in particular has seen phenomenal success, recently surpassing 50 million downloads. The free app is currently the most downloaded program as registered on GetJar, a one-stop shop for mobile applications, with more than 36.7 million installations (up from 10 million in March 2009).

Its iPhone applications (a free one and a premium one that goes for $4.99) are also quite popular: in total, the apps have been downloaded 3 million times since their debut in the App Store. The free version was released in July 2009, the paid app late November 2009.

eBuddy expected between 4% and 8% of its free app users to convert to the paid application, and says it is indeed currently hovering around a 6% conversion rate. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that its revenue from the premium app is thus about $900k, or $600k if you take into account Apple’s 30% cut. Conceivably, adding the revenue from ads on its free app, eBuddy is raking in around $1 million from its iPhone applications alone.

If you’re keen on giving the premium app a whirl for yourself: the first 1,000 users who purchase eBuddy Pro from the U.S. App Store and follow the instructions on this promotion page will receive an iTunes gift card worth $5, i.e. the price of the app.

In total, eBuddy has attracted about 100 million unique users, of which about a quarter uses the service at least once every month. These are heavy users: on average, 14 billion messages get sent via eBuddy per month. And don’t think all of them are using their cellphones: eBuddy’s Web application has seen 50% growth year over year, says Rueb.

Still, its strategy of having a feature-limited, ad-supported app in Apple’s App Store alongside a paid premium one with more bells and whistles, has resulted in close to 50% of the company’s revenues now coming from its slew of mobile products. Advertising accounts for about 60% of that income, and 40% comes from app sales today.

Rueb declined to share revenue numbers in greater detail, but said that the company has now been profitable on a net income basis for the past four months and is cash-flow positive, which means its mobile monetization strategy is clearly working out well for them.

A bit of good news for BlackBerry users, finally: eBuddy expects to (finally) ship a custom client for the platform in the next couple of months.

Nearly five months after launching a free, ad-supported application for iPhone and iPod Touch, eBuddy is today introducing a paid version of the program, which enables users to communicate with contacts across various instant messaging clients.

Priced at $4.99 (iTunes link), which in my opinion is fairly expensive, the app lets you chat with friends on Facebook Chat, ICQ, Gtalk, AIM, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo Messenger alike.

Unlike its gratis counterpart, eBuddy Pro for iPhone and iPod Touch is advertisement-free, and boasts a couple more features that the company hopes people will be willing to pay for:

- push notifications for incoming messages when the app is closed (for up to 3 days)
- the ability to transfer photos from the device to friends without leaving the app interface
- the option to set your display picture from your camera or photo library

The application also lets you switch between chat conversations by swiping the screen of your iPhone or iPod Touch (handy) and sends out a buzzer when the device is shaken. The Netherlands-based company promises more features will be included in future updates (e.g. landscape mode).

Ebuddy says over 2.5 million people have download the free iPhone application to date, while (only) some 180,000 downloads have been registered for the Android app. The free iPhone app was ad-free until today – and the company recently partnered with India’s InMobi to increase its mobile advertising revenue and will start doing that now that the premium app is available in the App Store.

Alternatives to eBuddy Pro include IM+ and Beejive (both cost more – feature sets vary).

The application for the iPhone and iPod Touch the company is announcing today has quietly gone live in the App Store last week (iTunes link), but hasn’t been promoted in any way since until today. It brings a very strong competitor to the likes of Nimbuzz and fring, both of which have had native iPhone applications for a while now. Where eBuddy differentiates is in its support for Apple’s Push Notification Service, which allows a third-party server to ping the service in order to push out notifications to your device over a persistent IP connection.

You can see how that comes in handy for an instant messaging tool, since it basically acts as a replacement for text messages. When you exit the app, you’ll still be able to receive incoming messages from your contacts regardless of which IM client they choose to use (apart from Skype, but that’s another story), for 30 minutes initially.

At a later stage, the company expects to prolong this push notification window but strives to maintain a balance between a longer time and not putting too much strain on the device’s battery life.

I’m told that eBuddy already saw about 2 million people using its product from the iPhone or iPod Touch before the app actually hit the App Store, thanks to the web-based eBuddy Lite Messenger tool, but the free native application that was just released will likely convert most of those users to it in a short period of time.

In fact, many seem to have already done so despite the lack of a marketing push: according to stats provided by app store analytics startup Distimo, the eBuddy for iPhone application is currently already ranked #1 in 21 countries, within the top 5 in 31 countries, and within the top 10 in 37 countries in the free social networking application category.

Of course, a massive user base doesn’t equal massive revenue streams, especially not when you’re giving away a product for free. I asked eBuddy how it expects to make money from its mobile applications (they’re already doing quite well on the web version, I’m told), and CEO Jan-Joost Rueb said he wants to see an aggregate mobile app user base of 10 million uniques before they roll out monetization efforts like advertising and paid premium apps.

Rueb expects to hit that milestone by the end of this year based on its current growth path, so basically if the company can attract 4 million more mobile app users on top of its current 6 million ones, they’ll start deriving revenues from them in Q4 2009.

The eBuddy application for Google’s open mobile OS is now available for free on the Android Market, and users can thus benefit from a single ID to chat with their friends on third-party communication platforms such as Facebook, Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ and more.

No Skype chat yet, which is a bit of a bummer, but apparently the startup is looking to add that functionality in their mobile clients in addition to all the other ones currently supported. I wonder which startup will be the first to bring Skype chat to Android, since neither Meebo nor eBuddy currently support it and both Nimbuzz and fring, competitors that do support Skype IM through their mobile clients, have yet to make their way to the open platform.

What I like about the eBuddy application is that it has the ability to run in the background, so when you receive a phone call the IM service will keep running and even reconnect you automatically when the internet connection is lost. If you maintain multiple friend lists on instant messaging tools, eBuddy neatly organizes all your contacts in one list so you don’t even need to think about which third-party service you should be connecting to, and lets you seamlessly jump from one chat conversation to the next.

On a sidenote: I can’t grasp why Android Market doesn’t offer a search function on its regular website – only on mobile – but if you ever want to look for applications that are available on Android you might want to check out Cyrket.com. The eBuddy app is listed here.

I got eBuddy, which is backed by a healthy €11.5 million (which currently converts to approximately $15.6 million), to share some numbers to get a feel of the traction it’s getting in the market, and came away fairly impressed.

These are the numbers they pitched me: 20 million mobile downloads of the J2ME mobile client since its launch in June 2007, 5+ million unique monthly mobile users on eBuddy Mobile, and with almost 14 million downloads of eBuddy Mobile Messenger on GetJar the top ranked mobile program on the platform.

Stellar upwards-pointing trends indeed, but this type of hockey stick growth is of course no guarantee that all these new users will be efficiently monetized over the long run. Only time will tell if eBuddy finds a way to turn its successful product into a profitable business.

The actual amount raised was not shared, but we’re told that the third round is pretty much on par with the Series B round the company closed in August 2007 (estimated at $12 million when we reported it, but more in the vicinity of $10 million according to information we received later) and that it’s “most definitely not a downround”.

Fring markets an entirely free, ad-supported mobile application that allows users to engage in Web-based social activities, including VoIP calling, instant messaging and social networking. The startup says it intends to use the extra funding to make the app compatible with more mobile environments (Android, anyone?), support more Web-based community services, introduce a couple of new features and make some usability improvements across the board.

When the economy started crumbling last Fall, fring let go 20% of its workforce, although at the time it stated revenues were actually on the upside but it needed to cut costs to extend its runway through 2009.

The company is up against a slew of well-funded startup rivals, including Nimbuzz, Truphone and eBuddy, but also increasingly against Skype, which is eyeing the mobile handset market more and more.

eBuddy, the instant messenger startup that we’ve likened to a European meebo (though eBuddy has been around for much longer), has released the latest figures for its mobile instant messaging client, and it looks like business is booming.

Since July, the mobile J2ME eBuddy client has been downloaded over 5 million times, and has seen 10 million total downloads since launching in summer 2007 (current download rates are pegged at around 1 million per month. The company reports 1.5 billion message exchanges monthly across an average of 3 million users. On application repository GetJar, the application is the top most downloaded app, ahead of notables like Google Maps. The application’s reach is also global, with availability in 195 countries and 37 languages.

While smartphones like iPhones and Blackberries may get most of the attention, the vast majority of mobile phone users are using more basic phones which support applications on the J2ME platform. eBuddy’s explosive growth is a testament to the size of this market, as well as the increasing trend towards using third party applications and data plans on mobile phones, even those that aren’t as advanced as smartphones.

Swedish startup Twingly, for instance, wants to come up with spam-free blog search by starting with the best 450,000 blogs and letting users share blog posts with each other. ParisBrussels-based Zilok is creating an eBay for renting things such as drills and digital projectors. London’s Fav.or.it makes a feed reader with extra powers—you can leave comments on blogs within the reader, it ranks posts based on how much they are actually read, and it lets you filter posts by tag, rank, or category. In Munich, andUnite has created a service that allows you to collect your search terms and share them with others.

And a handful of companies are even gaining substantial traction. I was surprised to learn that the social network Netlog claims 30 million unique visitors and four billion page views per month (comScore counts 11 million visitors, but five billion page views). Netlog operates in 15 different languages, and 20 countries. Then there is eBuddy, the Meebo of Europe, which boasts 12 million Web users and 1.6 million mobile users of its Web-based instant-messaging service.

Most of the startups I encountered, however, are still operating under the radar—in Romania, Sweden, Holland, Ireland, France. But a cross-border Web 2.0 culture is definitely gaining steam across Europe. Technology itself is helping to break down borders. A VC showed me the landing page on his mobile phone. It wasn’t his e-mail. It was Twitter. Another startup founder told me that Twitter helps him keep a dialogue going with other entrepreneurs and VCs across Europe, and even with contacts in the U.S.

Europe is still a mosaic of employment law, tax regulations, and cultural habits that can influence where it makes the most sense to locate different parts of a business. One Dutch CEO, for instance, told me that it costs you need a minimum of 18,000 Euros in starting capital just to incorporate in the Netherlands. And that is just the government’s fee.

When I asked which region was most likely to emerge as Europe’s Silicon Valley, the answers were all over the map: London, Munich, Berlin, Zurich, Geneva, even Barcelona. The money is in London, cheap office space is in Berlin, the mobile expertise is in Helsinki, the weather’s nice in Barcelona, and the inexpensive engineers are in Estonia (which may not even consider itself part of Europe, but is close enough to manage from Berlin or Amsterdam).

As Europe searches for its Silicon Valley, it may turn up as a state of mind rather than a specific place. The truth is that Europe may not need a single Silicon Valley because business is becoming so distributed. While some Silicon-Valley chauvinists may disagree, the idea of concentrating all the talent and capital in one region seems so last century to many Euro 2.0 entrepreneurs.

(Photo © Pieter Baert).

There are three key changes of note. First they are now embracing services that they previously tried to stop – multiheaded clients and websites that allow users to access all of the major instant messaging platforms in one place. These are desktop services like Pidgin (open source), Adium (Mac) and Trillian (Windows). And web based services like Meebo and eBuddy. Today those services have to hack in to MSN, Yahoo and AOL services (Google Gtalk is open). Now AOL is giving them unfettered access, too.

What that means is that AOL goes from being in a position of half ignoring services like Meebo and half vaguely threatening to sue them, to fully embracing and supporting the services.

Second, AOL is also removing the usage restrictions that were put in place two years ago that restricted big services from using them (again, forcing Meebo, eBuddy and others to hack in).

Third, AOL is saying they’ll soon be giving partners who build software on top of AIM the option to run AOL-served advertisements with a revenue share. AOL says more details on advertising will be coming next month, and will be powered by their Userplane group, which AOL acquired in 2006.

There are a number of additional changes to OpenAIM as well, including more robust tools for third party add-ons (see gallery of existing add-ons here) and for mobile applications. And they are documenting their protocol for accessing AIM, called OSCAR.

David Liu, AOL SVP of Social Media, Messaging and Homepages, said in an interview that they want to remove all the friction and hurdles to third parties who want to leverage the AIM service, and welcome them with open arms. “To that end, we’ve come together with third-party chat services such as meebo and eBuddy to enhance the experiences of our users who access the AIM platform from these web-based services. We’re also giving developers the tools and flexibility they desire to build innovative and meaningful applications around instant messaging for web users around the globe.”

AIM has 27.3 million monthly users (plus another 30 million at ICQ, which is not part of this announcement), according to recent Comscore data. MSN has 235 million and Yahoo has 97.6 million. Gtalk has 4.9 million.

eBuddy and Meebo are roughly equivalent according to worldwide Comscore numbers (4.8 million unique visitors for Meebo in December 2007, 4.5 million for eBuddy). Ebuddy says their internal stats actually show 12 million monthly uniques, with 1.5 million new users being added monthly.

eBuddy users can log into AOL, Google Talk, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo Messenger from their website, without the need to download any additional software. The company was originally called eMessenger, but relaunched as eBuddy in June 2006.

FlickIM is letting applications integrate right into chat messages or as widgets along a sidebar. For instance, a Yelp widget will let users search for restaurants and send the reviews to friends through a chat message. Similar to Facebook, users will be able to add and remove the applications and notify their friends about what apps they have installed. Another startup, Imified, integrates web applications into IM, but does this for desktop chat applications through commands to chat bots. Facebook is also a company to watch for this functionality.

For now Flick.IM has launched with a handful applications, but will soon let developers add their own widgets and services to the platform through an API released in the next two to three weeks. All the new applications and information will be available at Flickapps.com. While the depth of the API is still under scrutiny, it may even let developers provide contextually based services by scanning user’s conversations (with permission). For instance, if you’re talking about a movie, a Flick.IM application could automatically provide links and times for that movie.

Their starting applications included six widgets and two integrated services. The integrated services allow you to embed photos and videos right into chat messages. Photos are shared by uploadeding them directly, while videos can pulled from a YouTube video search by typing “/video VIDEONAME”. Non-Flick.IM users will get links to the pictures and videos instead of an embed. Widgets include restaurant search on Yelp, Google Gmail, Last.fm radio, LiveNation, Yoink’d video search, and a beercam for kicks. The Yelp widget has the greatest amount of integration right now. It lets you run a quick restaurant search and send the link to your chat box.

Flick.IM has broader ambitions than this IM client, with an overall focus on real-time social networking. The chat client will eventually be one of many services incorporated in a new domain to be launched in the coming months.

eBuddy now supports MySpace IM, AOL, ICQ, GoogleTalk, MSN and Yahoo. Log in to some of all of these services from the eBuddy home page.

MySpace says they now have over 18.5 million users of the service, which soft launched in September 2006. By comparison, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM have 224 million, 93 million, 30 million and 30 million users, respectively (Comscore worldwide – July 2007). GTalk trails the rest, with just 4.8 million users.

Rumor is that Trillian, a downloadable piece of software that also accesses all major IM networks except Skype, will be adding MySpace support soon, too.