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The field of Web conferencing software is on the rise at a breathtaking pace. In the summer of 1994 there were only two products in this category, both of them rather primitive freeware packages. Today there are over 60 commercial and freeware products, many of them quite sophisticated, that support conferencing on the Web in one form or another. With so many products available, the choice can seem vast. But with a methodical approach, you'll probably find that you can quickly whittle the list down to just a few candidates. Conferencing is a form of group discussion that uses text messages stored on a computer as a medium to communicate. It does not include various types of real-time, or synchronous, communication, such as "chat rooms", voice-based teleconferencing, or video conferencing. A conferencing system is Web-based if it uses Web browsers and servers to function. This is not as clear a characteristic as it might sound. Most developers of conferencing software hurry to adapt their products to the Web, and the result is a lot of hybrid products that use the Web to a greater or lesser extent. Hence, the boundary between Web and non-Web conferencing software is a bit unclear.
Systems that work with unchanged Web browsers and servers are of greater interest, because they are more easily accessible to the great mass of Web and intranet users. Any Web software that requires users to install a browser add-on, or even an entire proprietary browser, suffers a handicap, although such special-purpose software might give it a considerably better user edge. Web conferencing systems have varying designs, partly because they were built with very different purposes in mind. Hence, a comprehensive comparison of all available products would be meaningless. It makes more sense to group them according to the different traditions from which they have made. Historically, there have been five "great rivers" of conferencing and conferencing-like software that have evolved more or less independent of one another:
1) Centralized forums 2) Groupware 3) Bulletin board systems (BBS’s) 4) Usenet 5) Mailing lists All of these rivers are now converging on the Web, and in this new environment they are mingling in ways that are beginning to hide the differences between them. But most of the conferencing products available today strongly show their origin. Although Web conferencing software has improved a great deal in the past two years, in the sense, all of the products available today are fundamentally crippled. The problems are not the fault of the conferencing software, some of which is pretty well designed. They are natural in the architecture of the Web itself. No conferencing system available today excels at everything. There is no single best product that is the best choice for every situation. The field of Web conferencing software is rich in variety, and many good products are available, each having its own strengths and weaknesses. But a careful analysis of your needs will help you to choose the product that is best suited to your application.
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