Free, useful and easy to use, make a powerful combination. That’s what made Hotmail, Skype, gmail, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook successful. It will probably make DimDim a success, too.

You probably haven’t run into DimDim yet, but it’s easy enough to understand. It’s just like Webex, except it requires no browser plug-in and it’s free. Yes, free. Right now it’s in Beta, but you can sign up if you want. It will go into full production in January.

There can be no doubt that this idea will get traction in the small business space. Free is very compelling. In fact, it will get traction quickly in the analyst community, because all the technology start-ups are going to use this rather than pay for Webex (or any other competitive service).

Whether DimDim itself will dominate this market is less easy to know. There are some other free collaborative services coming out, so it will have competition. But DimDim has some advantages, aside from its name, which is difficult to forget. The design of the DimDim collaboration space is well thought out and its streaming technology looks to be state-of-the-art. That’s not so important for voice traffic or for presentations, but it matters for video feeds. The voice and video are in perfect sync (if you try using it, watch the lips).

Thus far the collaboration market has been all about business collaboration. Free collaboration will change this and it will no longer be about Powerpoints and white boards – it will be about desktop sharing. The education market will inevitably become a big user, and maybe we all will in the end.

The Impact on Unified Communications

DimDim is Open Source, and it has published its interface so it can be used in mash-ups. This may be the beginning of a tectonic shift in Unified Communications market. Microsoft has just made its move into the market. It announced today. Naturally, the incumbents; Cisco, Avaya, IBM Lotus et al. have a huge interest in this market. They will all have to factor “free collaboration” into their business models (or provide it themselves). However, imho, the company to watch and for the other players to fear, is Google.

If DimDim starts to grow rapidly, it will surely be snapped up by one of these players.