Posts Tagged ‘ebuddy’

These five tech startups took a big step toward becoming self-sufficient, independent adults out in the real world. They transitioned from good, small companies to real grown up companies: StudiVZ, sevenload, Habbo Hotel, Jaiku and eBuddy.

Berlin-based StudiVZ is by far the largest social network in the German-speaking world, covering Germany, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland. StudiVZ’s 14 million users are on three social networks for different target groups: StudiVZ.net, SchuelerVZ.net and MeinVZ.net. StudiVZ was acquired by the German publishing group Georg von Holtzbrinck in 2008.

Sevenload is one of the world’s leading social media platforms for photos, videos and interactive shows. Among user generated content, sevenload is hosting over 1,000 web TV shows in their channels. The Web-2.0 media platform is currently available in twelve languages and offers localized country portals. Finnish Habbo Hotel is a social networking website aimed at teens from around the globe. By purchasing virtual furniture, users can design their own Hotel rooms and create a virtual hangout for themselves and their friends. The service has been created by Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä in 2000 and since then has been expanded to include 32 online communities.

Another grown up company from Finland is online microblogging service Jaiku: Founded in February 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku was purchased by Google in 2007.

Online messaging aggregator eBuddy offers a Web Based as well as a Mobile Messenger (click here for a free download from the Apple App Store). A new version of eBuddy Mobile Messenger has just been released.

Coming next Monday: "The Five Most Promising Mobile Startups". Click here for earlier "Top 5" episodes.

After introducing SIME last week, we would like to recommend another great event to you: LeWeb, the #1 European Internet conference that takes place every year in Paris.

The 6th edition of LeWeb will be held on Dec 9th and 10th 2009 and is all about the "Real-Time Web". LeWeb not only wants to be a tech conference but an event touching on more wide-reaching topics. Its main stage program will be featuring internet leaders and visionary entrepreneurs as well as world renowed voices like author Paulo Coehlo or designer Philippe Starck. To submit discussion topic ideas or speakers please click here.

Adjacent to the plenary stage, there are special Networking Zones (there even was a mobile sauna for tired conference attendees at LeWeb 2008!) Please click here to register to the conference.

As in the past, LeWeb 2009 will be running a StartUp Competition: The best 20 applications will be selected to make a 6-min-demonstration of a new product. To submit your company please click here.

Out of the many amazing and talented people that attended LeWeb 2008, Viktoria interviewed sevenload’s co-founders Ibrahim Evsan and Thomas Bachem, David Hornik from August Capital as well as eBuddy’s CEO Jan-Joost Rueb.



Leading global social media platform sevenload.com concentrates on modern internet television and User Generated Content. The new media company even helps pave your way to stardom by giving you your own show in one of the sevenload channels...

LeWeb is also great for meeting investors and VCs like David Hornik from August Capital. According to David who’s also an author and lecturer at Stanford and Harvard UC, August Capital will be raising a new fund despite the economic downturn.

Online messaging aggregator eBuddy.com offers a free Web Based as well as a Mobile Messenger that enable you to chat without downloads.

That's it for now - learn more about the Shift conference in next Friday’s edition of „Events2go“!

Jan-Joost Rueb, co-founded eBuddy.com 4 ½ years ago and is now its CEO. eBuddy aggregates chat between Amazon, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook and others on the web and on mobiles offering a unified interface. As an added service to chats, eBuddy started offering ICQ in Germany. 41 people are working in eBuddy’s office in Amsterdam and the company now has over 100.000 new users every day and around 8 million users per month. With 1.5 billion banners ads on the web, worldwide advertising is crucial for eBuddy's business. According to Jan-Joost, mobile advertising will be launched in Q1 or Q2 this year. Furthermore, eBuddy has secured €5 million in its series A financing by Lowland Capital Partners and had a financing round with €6.5 million by Prime Technology Ventures. They will be reaching the last funding round in January. Jan-Joost points out: „In the beginning we were really focussed on making money, so much so that the VCs were laughing at us. Now we’re really happy we did it, since we have a healthy business.“ Jan-Joost wants to be „the biggest messenger on mobile phones worldwide“ and plans to grow by having big deals with carriers. He is positive that „in a few years every single phone will have IM on it – hopefully it’s going to be eBuddy. We have the cards to win that game, we just have to play it right!“

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