Last week in the webinar industry was busy enough to justify another overview of interesting developments.
WebinarBase.com launched a listing and search service for webinars and webcasts. I wrote up my initial impressions in a quick post, but I have not worked with the site extensively. The list of webinar posting sites continues to grow… You can now choose from EventSpan, Finervista, WebinarBase, Webinar-Directory, WebinarHero and WebinarListings. Is there an app for that?
ON24 is doing some expansion. They added a CFO and announced new offices in Paris and Hamburg. This supplements their existing offices in San Francisco and London, making them a stronger multinational player. Local support is awfully nice when you are running an event.
Freebinar moved out of Beta and into general availability. This is a free web conferencing service for audience sizes up to 150. It is supported through displayed ads in the conferencing interface. The technology uses screen sharing for all presentation aspects, in the same vein as GoToMeeting. I did a quick check to make sure it runs, but a full review will have to wait a bit.
I just saw a site called TopTenReviews that posted their rankings of ten web conferencing products. I’m not actually sure when it was published, as they don’t put a date on their work. This can make it hard to tell how old the reviews are or which product versions they are comparing. That is important in a world of hosted applications where the technologies get updated frequently. But it’s good to have additional sources of comparison when shopping for a solution.
Sonic Foundry manufactures a hardware appliance to capture and stream webcasts originating from a local presentation room. They just announced a new smaller and lighter footprint for the device, making it easier to transport and situate in the room.
ViVu has a webcasting application that works in tight integration with Skype, allowing multiple video and audio connections. They have not publicly posted this news yet, but I have advance information that they have a new version of their software platform which adds archive and playback capabilities at no additional cost.
And to end on a light and playful note of schadenfreude, MSNBC ran a cautionary story about the dangers of getting complacent in a connected world. Always assume your audience can see and hear everything you do!
Enjoy your week!
Excerpted from Ken Molay’s post on the Webinar Success Blog