The battle of the Ajax web chat services took a new turn today when old-school E-messenger.net relaunched as Ebuddy.com. The Netherlands based company has also secured a round of funding from an as yet undisclosed, but top tier, VC firm.
E-messenger (now eBuddy) has been around since 2003, offers chat in a pop-up box and added Ajax functionality in February. It’s been challenged by upstart Meebo since late last year. Meebo requires chat to go on in a browser window. Both services support MSN, AIM and Yahoo, but Meebo also supports Jabber/GTalk.
These appear to be the two major players in the field, Meebo from the US and Ebuddy from Europe. Both now have VC funding, Meebo having received money from Sequoia Capital in December.
MessengerFX looks to be another good one for MSN messenger users.
Wow
Alexa is showing e-messanger.net having more pageviews but less daily reach than Meebo: http://www.alex...r.net+meebo.com
Alan, thanks. I was looking at that same graph but made a mistake on the three options. Removed specific reference to numbers.
I am not a Meebo fanboi, but I must say, I just checked out eBuddy and felt like it was total amateur hour. One of the preliminary tests I did was to IM myself from a desktop IM client (Trillian) to my dummy AIM account that was logged in at eBuddy. I sent a few IMs and to my surprise nothing came up on the browser side! With further QA’ing, I determined that it functions correctly on Firefox, but not so much on IE.
I can safely say (for now) I will be using eBuddy in situations when the Meebo service is being blocked by overzealous IT departments
Marshall, have you had a run at mabber yet? (http://www.mabber.com/) I’m not associated with them (honest!) but have been pretty impressed.
I just tested out eBuddy real quick and really did not like it at all. I was using firefox and logged into AIM. None of the pop-ups opened as large as they should for what they were displaying. Also, when clicking on the info link, no scroll bars appear for profiles that contained a lot of data (granted probably mindless data).
In any event, from first impressions I don’t see any way I could switch from Meebo to eBuddy unless they make their UI a lot better.
What? No G-Chat? lol
Goowy also offers web based integrated IM functionality along with email, contacts, calendar, file storage, minis, calendar and more. Check it out…
Check it out at http://www.goowy.com
If anybody here uses eBuddy (eMessenger), and would be interested in trying it from within Bitty Browser (see here) — ie, adding eBuddy to a personal start page like Google/ Netvibes/ Live.com/ Pageflakes, etc. — please drop me an email: scott@turnstyle.com
Hey now Scott, that’s good thinkin’
hiyaaaaaaaaa xxxxxxxxx
Hey Marshall — drop me an email!
This should be: eBuddy MSN in Bitty
This should be: eBuddy Yahoo in Bitty
This should be: eBuddy AOL in Bitty
meebo is the clear leader in this space.
We are working on an app that lets you use your Yahoo! messenger to chat with AOL, ICQ, MSN, GTalk users and vice versa. But that’s for real (”legacy”) IM clients, not Web IM.
You also have http://www.Mabber.com in europe for web and mobile.
I tried the mobile “client” to eBuddy. In order to receive IMs from someone, I had to click “reload”.
Sorry, having to guess when an IM is coming defeats the purpose.
This was on a Cingular 8125 running Windows Mobile 2005.
i use emessenger since a couple of months now.
Good news they landed themselfs a solid funding. let it grow
and i like the new name. well done guys.
cant wait what’s next……
p.a. Andrew no14:
i use the mobile version since i had to pay for the MS version. i run windows mobile 2005 on a qtek 9000. it reloads automatic. so must be some setting at your end. good luck
hey what exactly does AJAX mean???
Does anyone else think that the eBuddy mascot looks just like the reddit alien?
I have been using eMessenger for a long time, it’s my favorite (funky masot or not)…
i’ve been using emessenger for only two and i already like it
wt is dis ?
amie der
this websyt bites ass”!!!
hey
hi its very good
hey
hi peeps
beff is ma bbz =] in science
ola
Check out this new web based IM client built using AJAX. Messenger provides access to your favorite IM clients via a browser, messenger services include AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, IRC and many more.
check out https://www.imhaha.com. Web-based IM which allows cross-IM platform group chat and has a shared whiteboard feature which is pretty cool.
I use koolim, its nice.
try koolim.us.
I use eBuddy (http://www.ebuddy.com) prefer the tab mode.
Just tried the (free!) mobile version: http://mob.ebuddy.com
Works!!
eBuddy definately has a better UI! The Ajax stuff is impressing and the tab system is nice. Pretty refreshing; a European Web 2.0 company!
Just read that eBuddy has become more popular than Meebo.
Personally I use eBuddy because it looks the most to the common MSN/Yahoo/AIM interface. Most features (similar emoticons, nudges etc) are supported by eBuddy.
Think Meebo has an annoying interface and weird looking emoticons. Kool IM looks like Spongebob to me, haha!
eBuddy is my favorite as well. Me and my colleagues all use it at the office
By the way: looks like eBuddy has improved in speed.
I agree, eBuddy is a nice service for when you are at work or on the road.
I just tried ebuddy: pretty neat!!
I tried e-messenger about half a year ago.
Must say I am impressed with the improvements since then. eBuddy has become a lot faster and a lot more slick looking.
I agree ebuddy has improved a lot.
Wonder what their next new feature will be…
hola
ebuddy is nice, but the interface is old and they do nto allow you to log-in to all the messenger services through one generic interface like koolim and meebo allow.
I disagree about your first comment, Samer.
I think the ebuddy interface is very clear because -as mentioned before- it similar to the interface of MSN, AIM and Yahoo. Besides ebuddy is the only messenger that enables me to have my conversations in multiple tabs on one window.
Don’t get me wrong, ebuddy was the first player in the game and they are very respected, there is no doubt about that, the reality is that people who want to log-in to multiple messenger accounts are not able to easily do it with ebuddy as you are able to do it with other providers such as meebo and koolim.
There are many challenges for ebuddy because they have always had the lead in the space until new providers finally entered. They provide a lot but also lack a lot and i think for them to really make the turn they will need to really re-think thier strategy before they miss the corner.
This is just my 2 cents, ebuddy is an excellent provider and was the first but they are falling behind quickly.
-Samer
Samer makes some good points, i initially used ebuddy and now use meebo.
i use koolim also when meebo is blocked at work, i use meebo at school though.
ku je
check out koolim if meebo is blocked!
i use to use meebo, than ebuddy, now koolim because its not blocked.
also, samer makes some good points, i like meebo better than all of them.
check out http://www.koolim.com
supports aim, icq, msn, yahoo, irc, jabber, sametime, etc.
check it out, it rocks.