Open source Web meeting company Dimdim, Inc. (DEMOfall 07) has raised a $6 million Series B round of financing led by existing investors Index Ventures, Nexus India Capital, and Draper Richards. Earlier the Burlington, MA startup raised $2.9 million. The funding will go toward marketing and expanding services, the company said.
About 500,000 people in more than 180 countries have attended Dimdim Web meetings since its DEMO launch, the company reported.
Dimdim allows anyone to create and host a Web meeting, and share their PC screen, show documents and slides, collaborate via whiteboard, as well as talk via Internet audio through any Web browser (no additional downloads required by attendees). The company is working on a Macintosh computer version that will include Mac desktop sharing, or what the company calls "screencasting," along with the ability to record and have multiple presenters.
Besides a free Web meeting service, it offers a branded Dimdim Pro version for $99 a year and Dimdim Enterprise for large organizations as a hosted or onsite product (about $18,000). Dimdim competes against WebEx, Go to Meeting, and spreed.com, a free European Web meeting service.
Dimdim's open source version 3.5 "Eagle" is posted on Sourceforge. The two key changes are that the open source version no longer limits on the number of people who can join a meeting, and all the source code can be downloaded in tar files for a build-your-own version. Alternatively, Dimdim provides a VMware virtual appliance to reduce the effort of building your own. The open source version has been downloaded about 250,000 times, the company said.
