Tag: app-subdomain-redirection:nimbuzz

Nimbuzz is pulling support for MSN/Windows Live Messenger, effective immediately according to its official blog. Nimbuzz is one of the best apps that pull together your instant messaging and social networks; since Microsoft announced that Messenger was closing and users are being moved to Skype, it was only a matter of time before this happened.

Nimbuzz will continue to support Facebook, Google Talk, Yahoo! and Twitter. Skype is not available outside its official app, and there are no signs of any change to that policy.

Do you use Nimbuzz? Will that change now MSN has been removed?

The new version of Nimbuzz has hit the iPhone App store, which is great news if you’ve been looking to cut down your phone bill, but bad news if you’re the operator of a mobile phone network. We’re big fans of Nimbuzz and the way it lets send instant messages and chat for over Wi-Fi from your iPhone. And it seems the program just keeps getting better, and there are a number of interesting new features in the latest version, Nimbuzz 1.1.0.

For starters, there’s now a full dial pad for making free calls over WiFi. If you’re hooked up to a wireless network you’ll also be able to use Nimbuzz to make VoIP calls to landlines and mobiles using Skype Out, or another of the support VoIP networks. Even if you’re not in a WiFi zone, you can now make calls to your Nimbuzz buddies using the new dial-up VoIP service. This means that no matter where they are in the World, you’ll only pay the cost of a domestic call.

There’s good news for iPod touch users too, because the new version of Nimbuzz lets you transform your device into an iPhone. You’ll be able to make calls over WiFi using Skype Out, or your VoIP provider (providing you have a headset, of course).

The addition of a slick new landscape chat mode completes the impressive set of changes to Nimbuzz, an app which is starting to become something of a phenomenon.

With so many different ways to contact people these days, phoning someone up is often the third or fourth option many of us think of when we want to get in touch with them. And as the mobile Internet gets faster and cheaper, more of us will be using our phones for email, instant messaging, VoIP, and accessing our social networks. This could mean that within just a few years, none of us will actually be making standard mobile calls, but rather using our handsets to send Facebook updates, post tweets to Twitter, chat on Google Talk, and talk via Skype.

The infrastructure to enable this to be done in a cost-effective way isn’t quite there yet, but the technology to do all of this certainly is. Recently, we’ve seen Skype announce that it will be bundled onto all new Nokia N-Series devices, and mobile IM apps such as qeep and Slick are growing in popularity. The leader in this field of multi-platform mobile communication is arguably Nimbuzz. This mobile social messenger, which I reviewed for Softonic a while back, is starting to attract some serious attention from both users and the mobile industry as a whole. Nimbuzz  already receives 20,000 new users every day, and has 12 language versions serving subscribers in more than 200 countries. It has been top of the iPhone App Store, won a Red Herring Global 100 award, and recently joined to the Research In Motion affiliate program.

I recently caught up with Geoff Casely, VP of Manufacture Markets at Nimbuzz, at the World Mobile Congress. Not only did he give me a demo (above) of the product in action on a Nokia N78, but he also outlined his vision for mobile social messaging and how it could spell the end of the mobile phone call: Continue reading “Will Nimbuzz ring in the death of the phone call?”