Mobile social hub Nimbuzz adds international calls to VoIP and IM

When GoMo News interviewed Tobias Kemper of Nimbuzz last month, we had to carefully skirt around some news they had ready for the start of November. Finally, we can reveal what that news is. Nimbuzz has added an extremely cheap international calling service to its already pretty formidable communications hub.

What is Nimbuzz?

Nimbuzz is a mobile service that uses VoIP and Instant Messaging to connect you and your friends as cheaply as possible. You can access it over you mobile browser, as a downloadable application or on your computer. The entire service is integrated into your contacts list, so when you search for one of your friends the option to contact them through a cheaper option is right there.

It also integrates with popular VoIP, IM and social networking clients – so you can use Nimbuzz to send a Facebook message to your friends, or Skype or Google Talk or etc. It’s a popular service: Nimbuzz claims to have 10 million registrations, and to be growing at a steady rate of around 40,000 new users every day.

For a closer look at the service, check out our video interview and demo here:

GoMo 1-to-1: mobile communications and the future of Nimbuzz from Cian Gomo on Vimeo.

What’s the news?

The news is called NimbuzzOut. You’ll need to put some money into this one, but a little cash will go a long way – and every other part of Nimbuzz is completely free. You can buy NimbuzzOut Credits at the website. International calls are pretty damn cheap – a call from the US to either the UK or China will set you back 2 cents a minute. The service is available through 3G and Wi-Fi on Symbian and iPhone OS phones at the moment, through more platforms should be support before the start of 2010.

What we think?

Nimbuzz is an extremely convenient service, so I couldn’t help but do a quick price comparison. I had a great experience with Skype recently, phoning my bank in Ireland. I wanted to know how much extra the convenience of Nimbuzz would cost me to phone a landline in my home country.

The answer surprised me. It’s actually cheaper. Not by much, mind you. Skype does calls to Irish landlines at 2.1 cents a minute. Nimbuzz does them for a flat 2 cents. Like I said, not much in the difference. But when something you expect to be more expensive turns out cheaper, it’s always a pleasant shock.