It’s no secret that group collaboration services like WebEx can be a major pain, particularly when they require proprietary browser plugins (some of them don’t even support Macs at all). Team Apart, a new startup launching in private beta today, is joining the fray of startups looking to offer an easier solution. If you’d like to try the service out, you can grab one of 100 invites for TechCrunch readers here.
As with similar collaboration services, Team Apart revolves around voice and audio chat, along with document sharing and editing. Alongside the video chat, you can edit a notepad and free-form whiteboard (multiple people can edit the same thing at once, and it’s updated in real-time). You can also upload documents and photos, which will become visible to everyone else in the meeting in a matter of seconds. Entering a meeting involves simply clicking a link — there’s no plugin needed (it’s based on Flash) and the service is free.
Team Apart says that its service is meant for ‘many-to-many’ calls where everyone is particpating rather than a one-to-many call, where one person does most of the talking and everyone else listens. Unfortunately that ‘many’ part of the phrase still needs some work — you’re currently limited to only four simultaneous participants, though that number may increase once Team Apart leaves beta. My biggest concern about Team Apart, though, is that there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot differentiating it from the myriad of other free (or close to free) collaboration services out there, which include Fuze Meeting and DimDim. Given the market size for this kind of collaboration tool there is certainly room for multiple companies to do well (especially as ‘virtual offices’ become more common), but Team Apart still needs to do something take separate itself from the rest of the pack.
The Team Apart founders were members of Y Combinator’s class of Summer ‘08, though the company has moved on to an entirely new project than the one they were initially working on while at YC. Update: Actually, this is the same project that the team was working on during the Y Combinator program, when the company was known as MeetCast.
I can’t believe how much webex costs. We just used dimdim to host a 3 day presentation with 150 others around the world and it was so much cheaper. I’ll give team apart a look and see what it offers.
Isn’t this space a bit played out? After being in this industry for about five years I notice it to be a bit crowded and commoditized.
s/adn/and/
Odd, the frontpage preview must be cached separately. Ignore me.
it seems that things will not be played out until they are free in the bit world…
Much like with Fuze/DimDim, they lack critical components to make this a true win:
1. Recording of sessions in Hi-Def (including the screen sharing part), and allow to archive them.
2. Free voice integration (skype or whatever else) that is aligned with the recording.
3. Editing of recordings
some e-commerce functionality, like allowing to charge attendees (can mimic eventbrite business model)
Seems like you’ve identified a need, now who’s gonna build it?
WE ARE! We here at Fuze Meeting are busy building all 3 of the above for our next release.
Our tutors have found webex cumbersome and expensive. So we have our own FREE integrated teaching tool with integrated course objectives, session notes etc. right within the tool. But this is very tutoring specific tool and only accessible from within the http://www.worl...orexchange.com/ site and may only be useful for tutors and students on the exchange.
Second paragraph, you wrote “collaboration” as “colaboration.” Honest typo, I’m sure, but the great thing about being web-based is the “edit” button. Sooo…fixplzkthx?
I’m not sure this space is played-out yet; each new offering brings something different. Plus as they mature, you get the opportunity to combine this with other software products for the benefit of the customer. Something like this would work well with a business presence ( http://www.on-s...com/blog/?p=299 ) offering, for example, in that your customer would be able to know if you’re there and then collaborate with you in real time with voice, doc sharing, video…all the benefits something like Team Apart offers. And if things progress, it could be launched with the click of a button on a website, too.
http://wwwstree...m.blogspot.com/
response to Guy:
We are actually offering what you ask for. With Conferendum Online Training, you can charge participants for your conference the price you want. We take care of collecting the participation fees and pass them on to the trainer. (We keep 25% as a fee). Other than that there are no costs. You can register for free at http://www.conferendum.com and try it out.
Wolfgang
Just to clarify a potential point of confusion: this is not an entirely new project from what we were working on during YC ‘08.
When the heck is Skype going to jump into this space?
哈哈 新颖
Hi TC, you may also want to give my product a look.
http://www.scribblar.com has been around since last autumn. Built single handedly by an unfunded one man band
I like Team Apart’s simplicity and that’s something Scribblar also tries to focus on. A lot of other tools I see out there are too complex. Adding features is too easy. Leaving features out is hard.
here is another
– http://internet...689&lang=EN, again a small team, ( self – funded ) , we are currently purely white-label provider to SMEs, though we plan to launch as a service soon, not as a Webex or TeamApart – wannabe, instead we have a easier model.
It is true that there are a lot of competitors in this space. We have found in our last 8 years competing in this market that if you package the best features like VoIP, Recording, Desktop Sharing, etc at the right price you will be successful. ~ Marv Toyer President, eBLVD.com