Jan-Joost Kraal joined eBuddy in May 2006 and brings extensive product management experience within the telecommunications industry to his role as VP of Products & Marketing at eBuddy. Kraal is responsible for all strategy, marketing, business development, and product management related to expanding the eBuddy solution and brand. In this position, he is leading a team of Product Management, Marketing, Visual/Interaction Design, Community Management and Business Development, has introduced several new mobile IM clients and has improved the existing products, leading to a significant increase in web and mobile usage of eBuddy.
Prior to joining eBuddy, Kraal spent nearly 6 years as product manager for telecommunications company, Telfort B.V. (formerly O2 Netherlands), where he was responsible for product development, road-mapping and in-life management of several data services. Highlights at Telfort B.V. include the introduction of several data services along with significant international strategic development, marketing and rebranding experience.
eBuddy processes over 11 billion messages per month and enables more than 30 million unique monthly visitors to chat in one interface across all major IM networks including AIM, Facebook Chat, Gtalk, ICQ, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! eBuddy is one of the world’s fastest growing mobile IM services with over 10 million unique monthly mobile users, and offers four, free mobile IM versions: eBuddy for iPhone and iPod Touch, eBuddy for Android, eBuddy Mobile Messenger (J2ME) and eBuddy Lite Messenger (mobile Web). eBuddy’s premium native application, eBuddy Pro for iPhone and iPod Touch with additional exclusive features is for sale via Apple’s App Store.
Kraal has a Masters degree in Industrial Design Engineering from the Technische Universiteit Delft in the Netherlands, specializing in Innovation Management.”
(Source: Mercury Global Partners - corporate communications for eBuddy)