San Francisco based webcasting firm ON24 has announced an $8 million round of funding. The announcement comes on the heels of a newly released product, Virtual Show, which provides organizations with a virtual venue for trade shows, job fairs, conferences, and training summits.
ON24 launched in 1998 as an online financial news channel selling original content to investors. At its peak, the company delivered syndicated content to various financial portals such as Merrill Lynch, E-Trade, and the Nasdaq trading floor. However, the dot-com burst in 2000 forced ON24 to shift focus, and in 2003 the company introduced a web-based video publishing platform that enabled users to produce live and on-demand webcasts. Now the company specializes in webcasting solutions, offering a collection of products that allow global marketers to conduct seminars, meetings, and even trade shows virtually over the web. It currently does business with some of the largest publishers and enterprises out there, including IDG, Reuters, IBM, Cisco, and HP to name a few.
Online collaboration platforms seem to be a growing trend within large companies, and with the high prices of oil and air travel this looks to be a continuing theme.