13 May 2008

A Netherlands-based startup is offering a sort of Swiss Army knife VoIP-IM-chat-texting program that can operate on hundreds of mobile phone handsets, according to an announcement Tuesday.

Called Nimbuzz, the all-in-one application
was announced in the U.K. and the beta offering is available for
download. The company has received several million dollars in backing
from venture capitalists, including $10 million from Mangrove Capital
Partners, which was the original backer of Skype.

The application works across several social
networking sites including MySpace and Facebook and enables users to
communicate with each other, often free of charge. Nimbuzz currently
has 500,000 users; they can utilize the application inexpensively if
they have flat-rate data plans.