Official Nimbuzz Blog

It has been brought to our attention that some members of the Anonymous hacker group “leaked confidential information” about the fact that Nimbuzz has restricted VoIP access in some countries.

This was public information and we have been communicating this via our Twitter account, the Nimbuzz support email and even by sending a direct chat message to all affected users, so we are surprised they did not know that.  Next time simply check our Twitter feed guys .

Here are the facts.

In countries like Egypt and Syria, local regulators blocked access to the Nimbuzz application because it provides free mobile calls (VoIP).

Because we want to enable our customers in these countries to still communicate via Nimbuzz, we tried offering our users a chat only Nimbuzz app, thus disabling VoIP access. We tried to negotiate with the operators and convince them to restore access to Nimbuzz, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case and we are still blocked, like other VoIP providers.

To prevent a similar action happening in other countries, we are trying to negotiate with operators beforehand and see if by restricting VoIP access on their network, we can still offer our users a chat-only app, instead of umm… nothing! The point here is not to “collude” with anyone, but to provide the services we are permitted to provide within applicable laws and regulations.

As you can see the accusations that we censor communication are not only false, but is the opposite of what we are actually doing.  Our core business is mobile communication (VoiP and Chat). Why would we ever do anything to voluntarily block communications for our customers?

Our take: This time, Anonymous group has its facts completely wrong … for two reasons:

1. Publishing already public information. Ask our users.
2. Accusing Nimbuzz of censorship. Not true since we do our best to bring free mobile communication to all our users.

In regards to the security breach they have used, we have identified the issue and it’s fixed. No user data was compromised.

ICQ not working on Nimbuzz? We are aware of that but unfortunately there is not much we can do.

Over the last two weeks we have been chatting with the guys from ICQ about an agreement to continue support for the ICQ community on Nimbuzz.  The final offer was to enter a licensing agreement that would see Nimbuzz pay for every person wishing to use ICQ on Nimbuzz.

This would mean that we’d have to pass the cost on to our users, which would be against our principle of making Nimbuzz available to anyone for free.  We are sorry to let you know that we have officially switched off support of ICQ on Nimbuzz.

However, we will continue to offer Nimbuzz and all of our services free of charge to everyone in the world.  What that means is that you can continue to use your existing Nimbuzz account to stay connected to your friends, make free calls and chat as much as humanely possible. 

Because we understand your frustration we  have an open discussion running on our forum, where all your questions and concerns will be addressed.  Make sure to visit the forum to find updates.

Stay buzzing, and we hope that our brand new Nimbuzz for Nokia Symbian phones (combined with a little bonus ) will make up for some of the disappointment.

The Nimbuzz Team

Although Nimbuzz is a Dutch company and we have our HQ in Rotterdam our team comes from all over the world.

Yes, English is the common language we use, but we know things can get lost in translation, especially when communicating with you guys and people who use Nimbuzz all over the world.

Luckily, we got some amazing talent on board we took it upon ourselves to create local blogs for you in (accessible via the flags at the top of the sidebar ) .

This way you’ll get the latest news about Nimbuzz, special deals on phones in your country, insights into the mobile landscape, and access to Nimbuzz team members that speak your language and take your feedback.

Starting today we want to introduce the team behind the blogs and because Thiago, our man in Brazil came up with the idea he will be the first to say hello and why you should visit the Nimbuzz Brazil blog.

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We did it! Thanks a lot guys!!

This is truly epic. Not even 24 hours after we asked you to help us get there, we crossed the 100,000 Twitter followers milestone!

That’s amazing! Thank you guys so much for your continued support and loyalty.  We will continue to bring you the latest of what’s happening at Nimbuzz and promise to continue the ongoing conversation with you via Twitter.

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We wanted to give you a quick heads up that Yahoo calling will be unavailable for about 2 weeks.

We will be working on some improvements to the service and that means yahoo calling will be switched off a few hours from now.

In the meantime, please go ahead and use the high quality Nimbuzz to Nimbuzz calling for totally free all over the world.  Need to reach mobile phones and landlines?  Use NimbuzzOut for incredibly cheap international calls.

Also make sure to give the free file sharing a try if you haven’t done so already.  People are always happy to get a picture from you

image credit goes to ymessengerblog.com

With over 99,000 followers, we wanted to invite you to witness the moment when we break the 100,000 milestone. Most likely this will happen some time over the weekend or at the beginning of next week.  However, with your help we can make it happen much faster

In case you didn’t know, you can follow Nimbuzz on Twitter to stay on top of the latest and greatest of what Nimbuzz has to offer. Join  the conversation and hear what others are tweeting about in regards to Nimbuzz. Symbian users of Nimbuzz are especially lucky as we have top notch Twitter support in that version.

Invite your friends to follow us on Twitter, and follow us yourself if you aren’t already. If you want to find out first, you will find out via Twitter.  Let’s break the 100,000 followers milestone together!  Thanks for all the support!

If you are already following us, maybe consider becoming a friend of us on Facebook, or subscribing to our blogs via RSS

Back in December we launched two very cool contests for all our  NimbuzzOut users:

• Win a fantastic holiday to your most-called destination!
• Make the first call of 2010 on NimbuzzOut & we’ll pay your bill for the year!

First and foremost, for anyone who doesn’t know yet, NimbuzzOut lets you make incredibly cheap international calls from your mobile, to landlines and mobiles anywhere in the world. By using it on your mobile or PC you can save up to 95% of your monthly bill.

Currently NimbuzzOut is available on Nimbuzz for iPhone, iPod Touch, Symbian, Windows Mobile and PC with more to follow soon! .

How much you can save? Check the NimbuzzOut rates .

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I’s Friday! Which means a quick trip around the world to check out the best from the Nimbuzz local blogs this week:

See the titles after the JUMP:

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The coolest Networking Event in San Francisco is back !

Since our last Buzzworthy event was a total success, we decided to have another one.

As always, our aim is to bring together developers, CEOs, media/bloggers, and the marketing agency/PR side in a casual setting where everyone can profit from making connections. We want to thank our sponsors very much for helping us put the event together: Getjar, Motally, Mplayit, Smaato, and SparkPR.

Media get their feast on talking with app developers and CEO s, agencies get to understand the mobile space and get new clients and developers, start-ups get to talk to media, and the best of  all…. we all get  a break from our busy schedules .

Read more about the event…

Results are in from the latest Nimbuzz blog poll (see question and results above). Thank you for your time and for your votes!

We are really happy to see that 76% are using Nimbuzz on their mobile phones, and since we support more than 1000 models this comes as a great reward for all our efforts .  For those who don’t know here is the list of the mobile operating systems we currently support: iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Java and Windows Mobile.

Check if you mobile phone is currently supported here and you can download Nimbuzz on your mobile here.

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