eBuddy, a web chat application that actually was around long before the similar high-flying Silicon Valley startup Meebo, raised €6.5 million in a Series B round of funding today. The investment was led by Prime Technology Ventures. The company had previously raised €5 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.