Online (web) conferencing software is finding wider and wider acceptance for both business and personal use. Several companies offer web conferencing services. Which is best for you depends on what you intend to use it for now and in the future.
Web conferencing software is different to the Internet messaging and calling software that is also available from many sources. Web conferencing is designed to allow many people to participate in a conference or for a presentation to be made to many viewers, whereas the messaging / calling software is designed for conversations between two or three people.
The better conference software packages can offer much more than just meetings online, although just by having some of your companies meeting online your company could save a small fortune in traveling expenses and be much greener.
Some businesses use their web conferencing software to do sales presentations to prospective customers and to provide after sales support and training to customers, so it is enhancing their existing business.
Online conferencing software can also open up whole new business opportunities, how about online live teaching courses, maybe teaching languages, or computer programming or how to use particular software packages. You could take this even further, how about online live cookery classes, with a decent web cam so people can see what you are doing all sorts of ideas become possible.
As mentioned earlier some web conferencing software offers extra features, such as a white board where participants in a conference can collaborate by drawing and writing on an online white board, to brainstorm or illustrate points.
With some online conferencing you can present a prepared power point or slide presentation, or show a video, some allow you to share the desktop of your PC so you could show how to use a piece of software, or show the output from a piece of software say a graph, or offer support to someone else sharing their desktop to show an issue they are having.
Another nice feature in some of these packages is the ability to record your sessions. These recorded sessions can then be kept as record of some decisions made, or put online as training sessions, or maybe even sold as a product depending on the content.
Web conferencing has become a sophisticated powerful flexible tool, the only limit now is your imagination.
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