DEMOfall 07: Day 2 - Hello, DimDim...Bye-Bye WebEx?

I love it when a presenter confidently struts onto center stage and does a big, bold shout-out to get people to sit up straight and listen. "WebEx is history!" D.D. Ganguly, DimDim's CEO, yelled to start his presentation -- which brought applause from a lot of people. And DimDim just might be a credible challenge in the web conferencing or screen-sharing space, with its free, open-source, hosted service.  It already has 125,000 customers, I was surprised to learn. There's no software to download, and anyone who uses a browser, said the CEO, can very easily show their slides and/or their desktop, plus talk, listen, chat, and broadcast via webcam. The service is free to consumers, though the firm will sell an enterprise edition -- but at a fraction of the cost of other web conferencing apps, the company said. What's more, since it's an open-source app, it can easily be customized and enhanced by developers. To date, DimDim has raised $2.9 million from the founders and VC firms Draper Richards, Index Ventures, and Nexus India Capital. The CEO played a video of Draper Richards' Howard Hartenbaum saying that, after investing in HotMail and Skype, this was an "obvious next investment."  That's some pretty heavy endorsing he's doing there! Makes me think we should be paying attention to DimDim.