The trend towards moving Office documents online for collaboration and remote viewing continues unabated. There’s still no dominant challenger to recently acquired WebEx – everyone knows how to use it and so people keep using it. But a new startup pops up almost weekly that addresses this market.
Slidelive is this week’s entrant – a not bad browser-based free WebEx competitor in beta. Presentations can be easily uploaded and conference calls scheduled to review them. Not many bells and whistles, but for many people it will get the job done.
It joins Zoho Show, Zentation, TeamSlide and Scribd in allowing uploading of powerpoint presentations (some of these also have tools to create presentations, access control, and other features as well). Google will launch their own product shortly. And there are also at least two WebEx competitors we’ve covered in the past – DimDim (open source) an 1VideoConference.
So there’s always room for one more, but the space is over crowded and it’s unlikely Slidelive is going to get much traction. Try it out if you are looking for something that helps you schedule meetings around a presentation, including access control, etc. It may be useful for you.
There’s definitely a market out there for online collaboration. Not sure if this one will stick around or get acquired at some point, but hey, it’s free and it works.
I am not sure it’s fair to compare this to WebEx.
Allen – it’s their comparison, not mine.
While sharing a powerpoint is good, you often find yourself wanting to share other things (e.g. Browsers, Excel, Visio, Screenshots, …). I think that the best solutions are the Screen/Application sharing services.
Adobe Connect rocks in this space (from a product standpoint). $35/Month and you have an all you can eat deal (the only limitation is the number of participant/session). We are using Adobe Connect a lot at sportner.com.
BTW, I am still surprise that Skype does not play in this space.
Yea, sorry Mike – should have been clear. If I was Marketing Director at SlideLive, I would not position myself as a WebEx replacement or competitor.
Michael, if “zzzzzzzzz” is in the title, you probably shouldn’t be writing about this company. Give the space to a more interesting start-up.
Jeremy is correct. Sharing screens/applications is far more helpful and prevents a lot of compatibility issues.
I have a feeling that both DimDim and 1VideoConference will stay in business, as they are released opensource, and therefore will not require all of the costs that are inherent in ordinary software.
Although their revenue streams will probably not be as large as WebEx, I expect that their products will take a significant part of the market, as DimDim only takes several minutes to install on a server, and is responsibly stable/ completely free.
Any ideas for what’s best for a several hundred person webinar? Anything open source or free? I’ve been searching around but not having much luck finding anything but the big dogs. DimDim seems like it has limitations on the number of the participants.
You forgot about slideshare. They do something similar.
Michael, in the same space you forgot to mention SlideAware (reviewed by Duncan 2 months ago). Although, to be fair, online presentation is only a small part of what SlideAware offers (it focusses on the entire lifecycle of powerpoint presentations: creation, delivery, analysis and embedding)
Didier Prophete
CTO, SlideAware
Interesting idea, not a zzzz at all in my opinion. Webex is a HUGE market (it’s been called the #1 or #2 SAAS player), it’s expensive, and it’s pretty lousy user experience in many ways.
And yeah, slideshare started the whole “share your ppt files online” space. and has an Alexa rank in the 4181 at the moment.
We switched from Webex to Goto Meeting and Goto Webinar about 3 months ago. These products are excellent (better than Webex) and less expensive than Webex. We are saving about over $1,000 per month vs. what we used to pay for Webex.
Glenn Turner
President
FireStream WorldWide, Inc.
Just wanted to comment on some comments. DimDim development is looking stagnant for a while. Adobe Connect does not have VOIP which is a serious and strange limitation. Strange in the sense that there is video but no VOIP. I hope google will launch Marratech which they have acquired as a conferencing tool for masses.
MDC launched mPOWER Play last week, which allows the use of audio, video, images, text, shapes and frames within a presentation (you can import PP or create your own via the MPP interface). Users can also control these objects, with timing, scroll, fades, etc and even create flash-like effects.
It is a free, web-based tool, which allows multi-author/viewer collaboration in real-time and presenatations can be published offline or online as a Webinar, website, web page, or via email.
Check out Zoho Meeting which is free at the moment. It is integrated with Zoho Show too.
I might as well chime in with tools like http://www.flip.com, http://www.scrapblog.com, and http://www.vuvox.com
All three are geared towards the slideshow crowd, offering a service which compiles the user’s media into complex flash presentations. Okay, none of these are meant to be professional powerpoint-esque presentation tools but the technology is very similar, right? Would you consider these competitors or are they in a different market?
@ Eric F (#9)
Yugma let’s you invite up to 100 other people (Windows, Mac, and Linux) for $69/mo. Also, you can also invite up to 500 for $89/mo. You can check it out http://www.yugma.com .
The basic version is free forever, works great on all platforms, is super easy to use, and provides instant real-time collaboration across any application — not just presentation of Powerpoint presentations. The free version let’s you collaborate with up to 10 others as often as you wish.
Karel Lukas
http://www.yugma.com
Hello,
This is Austin from Yugma (www.yugma.com). I’d like to invite readers to try our web conferencing and collaboration software. Our comprehensive set of features comes at a price that compares very favorably to others. We are completely focused on being extremely easy, inexpensive, and cross-platform compatible. In addition to having excellent service for Windows users, we’ve been getting great reviews for our ease of use and support for Mac users. We also recently launched support for Linux (8 versions supported), and are currently rolling out a VOIP beta version. CNet recognized Yugma this year by selecting us as a finalist in its 2007 Webware 100 Awards.
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———
Yugma Marketing Team
http://www.yugma.com
This is Jack from slidelive.com. Thanks to techcrunch for posting the article, even with the “zzzz’s”. Many of you have missed the point(s) with slidelive. First – Using Webex is a terrible experience. It’s next to near impossible to set up a meeting let alone make it to the end without it crapping out. Second, slidelive allows you to make multiple powerpoints public on a slidelive.com/yourname site. So as many ppt’s as you want to share with the world on your own slidelive space, go ahead. If you missed someone’s presentation, you can easily retrieve it later. You cant do that with Webex. Third, slidelive will support mobile devices in an upcoming release. So how about attending a webinar via your blakcberry?
Bottom line, it’s a free service. Cobine it with skype and you pay nothing vs. to $50 to $100 per month for a webex user.
This is Mike, the architect of slidelive.com. Wanted to post a few thoughts on how we designed this site, and what our target is.
This site was developed by guys who do professional presentations for a living. We realized that 90% of the folks out there use WebEx or other similar solutions simply to show a powerpoint to someone else. Then afterwards, have someone come back and be able to view or download the presentation afterwards.
What differentiates us from slideshare or others? The following:
1. Only flash is required (which everyone has). There is absolutely nothing else to download…unlike webex or others we have seen.
2. Simple and yet secure – Sure you can upload a ppt to slideshare.net, but what if the information you want to share is confidential? We address this by using a very simple paradigm…passcodes. Simply assign a passcode to a document, tell your user to go to slidelive.com/username, enter the passcode, and now you can not only view and download the document, but now you can start a meeting. Nobody we have seen has this capability…simple, and yet secure. You can be up and sharing in minutes.
3. It is free – You can’t beat free.
The site may seem simple on the surface (which is by design), but look under the covers a little, and you will find a very powerful design that fits what professional presenters want most…a place to share their presentations in a secure way.
Stay tuned…more to come.
Mike at Slidelive.com