eBuddy’s Mobile Monetization Helps It Turn Profitable

For the past four months, Amsterdam-based eBuddy has turned a profit, according to CEO Jan-Joost Rueb, by offering advertising-supported services for free in combination with sales of a premium iPhone application.

The company, backed by $11.5 million 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 by Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Android used by Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Nexus One.

In all, 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.

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