Web Conferencing Software

Web conferencing software applications are in continuous production ever since the first products in this category appeared in the market in the summer of 1994. During that time, the only two web conferencing software that were ahead of their time were rather primitive and offered as freeware packages.

The features were pretty basic but the possibilities that they managed to open up enticed many software companies to produce more and improve on it. Today, there are well over 60 commercial and freeware web conferencing software products.

Many of these are quite sophisticated and manage to support conferencing on the World Wide Web in one form or another.

Web Conferencing Software: A Definition

With the steady increase in the popularity of web conferencing software used in place of company meetings, it is imperative that we understand what exactly the nature of this application is. First thing’s first.

What is conferencing? For our present purposes, conferencing is a form of discussion between groups of individuals conducted using text messages that are stored on a computer as a communication medium.

Contrary to what most people suppose, it does not include various types of real-time, or synchronous, communication, like you find in “chat rooms”, voice-based teleconferencing, or video conferencing.

When you say web conferencing, it means that the system is conducted using web browsers and servers to provide most of its functionality.

The distinction between web conferencing software and those that are simply not web-based is not very clear since majority of the products available today are a hybrid of the two.

Most developers of web conferencing software are hurrying to adapt their products both to online and offline applications.

Types of Web Conferencing Software

Web conferencing software systems have widely varying designs. This is due in part to the fact that web conferencing software tools were built with very different purposes in mind.

Generally speaking, there are five “great rivers” to web conferencing software and each of them has evolved more or less independently of one another.

These are the following:

• Centralized Forums – This type of web conferencing software originated on mainframes in the early to mid-1970s with systems like PLATO Notes, Confer, and EIES. This web conferencing software allows discussions to be stored on one central computer and each new message is assigned a place in the discussion structure immediately upon being posted.

• Groupware – This type of web conferencing software is also known as workgroup collaborative software. In a sense, this application is an offshoot of Centralized forum software and it pretty much retains most of the basic features. It is focused primarily on group discussions.

• Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs)

• Usenet

• Mailing Lists