1-27-10: YuuGuu – Web Conferencing Solution
Highlights: Our first briefing with Yuuguu, a venture capital backed, private company in the U.K. Yuugguu is the Japanese word for fusion—and Yuuguu’s solution helps people fuse together a fragmented collaboration and communication environment. The solution includes instant messaging, screen sharing, and conference calling, among other things. Yuuguu sits on top of existing instant messaging systems, providing a unified interface through which you can interact with people using a variety of IM services–instead of having to get everyone on the same platform. It’s easy to invite and/or add contacts, open up a chat window and start sharing the screen. Every time you start a conversation, a private conference bridge is opened, and Yuuguu assigns a PIN number, which is displayed in your chat window. Yuuguu supports Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Skype and other IM platforms. It works on Linux and Microsoft PCs and Macs—and automatically recognizes which one you’re on for the download. Yuuguu offers a free version, a team version, and has just launched a corporate version. Later on this year, they plan to add voice and video support. The company has about 1000 paid users—and more than 250,000 people use the free version.
Quick take: Yuuguu is blurring the line between web conferencing and unified communications, making it easier for companies to collaborate on the fly and in real time, regardless of the different IM systems they may use. This open approach enables real time collaboration through these IM services, and provides unified tracking for companies that need an audit trail. As real-time collaboration solutions and platforms proliferate, Yuuguu’s open, aggregated approach should be attractive option for companies who find themselves struggling to collaborate effectively, even as they find themselves overloaded with collaboration tools.