Dimdim was a

software company A software company is a company whose primary products are various forms of software, software technology, distribution, and software product development. They make up the software industry. Types There are a number of different types of soft ...

that provided a web-based platform for realtime collaboration and meetings. Dimdim provided web conferencing service where users could share desktops, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk, and broadcast via webcam. It was compared to the

WebEx Webex by Cisco is an American company that develops and sells web conferencing, videoconferencing and contact center as a service applications. It was founded as WebEx in 1995 and taken over by Cisco Systems in 2007. Its headquarters are in San ...

2.0 web conferencing application. Dimdim was acquired by

Salesforce.com Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...

for $31 million on January 6, 2011.

Investors

Dimdim was financially backed by

Index Ventures Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/ AI, and security. Since its ...

, Nexus India Capital and Draper Richards.

Open source

Dimdim was made available primarily as an enterprise edition and as a Virtual Machine appliance, but an open source community edition has also been made available to developers under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

(GPL), giving them the option to install and host Dimdim in their own networks. The most recent open source version, released in December 2008 and hosted at sourceforge.net, is V4.5 "Liberty". However, no installation instructions were provided, and the software had several arbitrary limitations, leading some to describe it as "crippled". Distributions of the system for the installation to several OSes, Virtual Machines and the corresponding documentation are available in several archives on the SourceForge.net Dimdim site. Dimdim can be integrated with the e-learning platforms

Moodle Moodle is a free and open-source learning management system written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Moodle is used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other online learning projects in s ...

Claroline Claroline is a collaborative eLearning and eWorking platform (learning management system) released under the GPL open-source license. It allows organizations to create and administer courses and collaboration spaces over the web. The platform is ...

an
Docebo
the collaborative suite

Zimbra Zimbra Collaboration, formerly known as the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) before 2019, is a collaborative software suite that includes an email server and a web client. Zimbra was initially developed by LiquidSys, which changed their name ...

and the CRM software

SugarCRM SugarCRM is a software company based in Silicon Valley. It produces the on-premises and cloud-based web application Sugar, a customer relationship management (CRM) system. SugarCRM's functionality includes sales-force automation, marketing cam ...

. Unlike Dimdim's web-hosted services, the Dimdim open source server does not restrict the number of attendees or simultaneous meetings allowed. As of December 2010, at Dimdim's website, there was no download available for the open source version and the only way to download it was from SourceForge.net. Dimdim's acquisition FAQ states that the company would no longer be contributing to the open source project. As of January 2011, an open source fork called miDmiD had been started.

History

An alpha version of Dimdim was released in fall 2006, followed by a private beta launch in fall 2007. The company's first public beta was in April 2008. Version 4.0 beta was released in July 2008. Dimdim formally exited beta in December 2008 with the launch of version 4.5. Fall 2008, Starin Marketing, Inc., an American company that supplies products to the audio visual market connected with Sundar Subramanian and worked to develop an on-site turnkey solution that provided multi-user collaboration combining Dimdim software with products Starin offered. The most recent upgrade of Dimdim 5.5 was received with much criticism and numerous complaints of it being an alpha product. Various major changes took place in the interface of the system and its integration

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

with other systems.

Acquisition

On January 6, 2011, Dim Dim was acquired by

for US$31 million.

Revenue streams

As of 2010, Dimdim provided for hosted meetings, similar to

GoToMeeting GoTo Meeting (formerly GoToMeeting) is a web conferencing software by GoTo. It is an online meeting, desktop sharing, and video conferencing software package that enables the user to meet with other computer users, customers, clients, or colle ...

. Free meetings were made available for up to ten users. Professional meetings with collaboration tools for up to 50 users were also made available for US$25 per month, and

webinar Web conferencing is used as an umbrella term for various types of online conferencing and collaborative services including webinars (web seminars), webcasts, and web meetings. Sometimes it may be used also in the more narrow sense of the peer-l ...

hosting for up to 100 users or 1,000 event attendees was available for US$75 per month.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.dimdim.com/ Web conferencing Software companies based in Massachusetts Privately held companies based in Massachusetts Companies based in Boston Software companies established in 2006 Companies disestablished in 2011 Defunct software companies of the United States Salesforce