Zipcast offers SlideShare users a fast and simple way to initiate web conferences around presentations, whether they be their own presentations or any of the millions of public presentations hosted on the site.
The download-free web conferencing product — which taps HTML5 WebSockets to create a real-time communication environment — is structured with presentations slides on the left, a video slot on the right for the presenter and a chat area situated below the video box. Each SlideShare user has their own permanent, personalized meeting space at “slideshare.net/username/meeting.” Plus, all meeting attendees can optionally advance or backtrack through slides as they choose.
The Zipcast experience is also deeply integrated with Facebook, so users can log in with Facebook, post the public web conferences they join to their Facebook walls (or to Twitter) and post each of their chat comments to Facebook as well. These social features are designed to help webinar and other public web conference hosts exponentially increase exposure for their events.
Zipcast is intended to be a natural extension of the SlideShare service, as existing users are already using Skype and SlideShare simultaneously for a hackneyed web conferencing experience, says co-founder and CEO Rashmi Sinha.
Still, web conferencing is not exactly a fresh space and SlideShare will be going up against some incumbents. There are a number of enterprise offerings — Cisco’s WebEx and Go To Meeting probably ring a bell. Plus, many a startup has tried, and occasionally succeeded, at building a more user-friendly web conferencing alt ernative. The now...
