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I just got the following email from DimDim this afternoon:

From: Dimdim Web Conferencing [mailto:dimdim.noreply@news.dimdim.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 6:17 PM
To: rnoel@ebizroi.com
Subject: Dimdim acquired by salesforce.com

Dear Customer:

Dimdim has been acquired by salesforce.com. Your free Dimdim account will remain active until March 15, 2011. After that date, you will no longer be able to access your free Dimdim account.

Please see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for additional information.

We appreciate your understanding, and we thank you!

The Dimdim Team
________________________________________
Pursuant to the Dimdim Terms of Use (the “Agreement”) governing the use of Dimdim Inc.’s (“Dimdim”) Site and Services (as defined under the Agreement) by you (“You”), Dimdim is hereby exercising its right to terminate Your Dimdim Account and the Agreement in its entirety. Dimdim will continue to provide Services to you until March 15, 2011. Following March 15, 2011, neither You nor Dimdim shall have any further rights or obligations of any kind under the Agreement, including the right to access the Site, or receive or use any Services. Dimdim thanks you for your business, and wishes you success in the future.

Dimdim, 900 Chelmsford St. Lowell, MA 01851
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What is hard to understand is why Salesforce.com would acquire DimDim, which, by all accounts, was an up and coming web conferencing software company and real contender for market positioning, just to discontinue its service. Maybe the plans are to integrate DimDim into Salesforce.com What a shame. eBiz ROI has used the DimDim free web conferencing service now for over a year and was always quite happy with it (for free its hard to complain), so much so that it was the subject of DimDim blog post “Free Web Conferencing Software to Drive Sales and Boost ROI” last year recommending DimDim as a great resource for SMBs (Small to Medium Businesses) focused on sales and ROI.

We were holding out to buy a paid subscription for our company, eBiz ROI, Inc. until DimDim was able to finish a feature that would have enabled integration of teleconference audio with VoIP stream for recordings and mixed audiences that included both folks on phones and ones communicating trough their computer or other VoIP device.

What is interesting  about the unexpected (to us at least) announcement from DimDim is that they will not even be taking orders for paid subscriptions according to their faq. Well, maybe this is a win for Goto Meeting and WebEx, but for small to medium businesses everywhere benefiting form the DimDim free web conferencing service and have ongoing needs to support web meetings, it might be time to get your checkbook out!

After using DimDim for over a year supporting eBiz ROI, Inc. web conferencing needs and recently integrating their widget into the eBiz ROI Website and Blog, you can imagine the frustration! Don’t get me wrong, eBiz ROI is grateful to DimDim for their support and happy for the benefactors of the acquisition by Salesforce.com It’s been great knowing you DimDim, thanks for the memories!

Free web conferencing software can be used to drive sales while boosting your ROI. Web conferencing software provides businesses with a cost effective a global platform to communicate in a more intimate way than is possible on a voice sales call. As any successful sales executive knows, there is simply no substitute for face to face sales meetings, but if the alternative is to delay a meeting or limit the customer interaction to a conference call, then web conferencing software is a great enabler to selling into large, dispersed, and even global markets. Web conferencing software is a must have tool for any sales organization.

My experience with web conferencing software is fairly extensive, having used WebEx, Microsoft LiveMeeting, Centra, Citirx GoTo Meeting and other web conferencing solutions to train an International sales force and global system integrator partners such as Accenture, IBM and T-Systems while using web conferencing platforms to support selling to clients on the other side of the world (being in the USA, that means primarily India and China).

When launching eBiz ROI, Inc. as part of the communication plan, we were on a mission to find good free web conferencing software application to use in sales calls with national and international clients where we find it useful to share our desktops, reports and applications.

It was a short search (one Google search for free web conferencing software) until we stumbled upon a company called DimDim, which was ranked #1 in the Google search results:

As an SEO practitioners, we appreciated the fact that DimDim is ranked #1 in the search results for the query free web conferencing software which gave us the confidence to click through to their website and sign up for a free web conferencing account.

After signing up for a DimDim free web conferencing account and installing the DimDim thin client, we were up and running in no time. As a new business, we have started with the free service level, in addition to which, DimDim provides a number of enhanced paid service levels including DimDim Pro and DimDim Enterprise. We were pleasantly surprised that the DimDim free services supports such features as:

• short, permanent vanity URLs used to conduct meetings,
• public meetings profile page,
• instant screen sharing, white board and document sharing, co-browse web pages,
• Multi-platform support for Windows, Mac and Linux users,
• integrated free audio conference and automatic meeting widgets
• Supporting web conferencing meetings of up to 25 participants

To date, eBiz ROI has not yet outgrown the DimDim free service level. For those interested in learning more, check out the DimDim feature comparison which compares the different DimDim service levels against WebEx and GoTo Meeting, two of the leading, paid web conferencing infrastructure service providers.

In terms of ROI, managing costs is a key part of the equation and it is hard to beat free. I strongly encourage readers to give DimDim a try. I am not currently associated with DimDim, but like the product so much, I am thinking about participating in the DimDim affiliate marketing program managed through Commission Junction.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts on additional free tools that you can use to fuel the growth of your business while increasing your marketing ROI.