DimDim vs Adobe Connect

Salesforce has announced the acquisition of Indian web-conferencing service DimDim for $31 million. It's very appropriate acquisition for Salesforce. The company wants to dominate on the collaboration market with its social collaboration system Chatter. And web-conferencing and video conferencing (provided DimDim) - are the necessary collaboration components. Besides, DimDim can be used as a solution for online presentations and remote support, built into Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. The only thing that seems inappropriate - is difference in business approach of these two companies. DimDim is known for its freemium open-source model, that was very annoying for the key market players - Webex, GoToMeeting, Adobe Connect. Salesforce, on the other hand, likes to count money and provide something for free only having counted the profit. Therefore, it's not surprising that immediately after the announcement the free SaaS and open-source versions of DimDim have disappeared from the site. And those users who are already using the free SaaS version - can continue using it only until March 15, 2011. The open-source DimDim version can still be found on Sourceforge.

DimDim - is a web-conferencing service, hated by all its competitors (Webex and Co) for the low prices (combined with sufficient quality of service). How can one compete with DimDim, providing 20-person online meeting solution for free? Moreover it s available as SaaS and Open-Source solution. And recently DimDim unveiled new webinar service, that supports large online meetings with up to 1000 concurrent users for $75 per month. It goes beyond comparison with WebEx Meeting Center, that asks $69 a month for a virtual meeting room with 25 seats (imagine the price for 1000 seats).