Speedshare’s launch makes solitary Web browsing a thing of the past

Forget screen-sharing, where one remote person can see what another is doing.

The Osix Corporation has just scored $5 million to fill the world with its Speedshare service — simultaneously viewing and interacting between two people on any website or online application, form, music, or video. A public beta test is out today.

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The Redwood City, Calif.-based startup employs cloud-based application servers where a customized browser runs the mutual session.

“It works across everything,” CEO Cary Cole told VentureBeat, without any code required by any site or app and no downloads. He said the funding will be spent for sales and internationalization of the product.

Cole added that Speedshare, which uses only home-grown technology, does for online sites or applications “what Google Docs does” for collaborative online documents.

You go to the Speedshare site, create a channel, and then invite others to join in the site, online form, or whatever. While the platform can support up to 10 remote users, only two can have cursor control at a time; the rest just watch. Two people looking at Amazon, for instance, can both type into fields or click items.

The host can assign mouse or keyboard control. Sales reps can provide collaborative sales support or presentations, distant family members can mutually plan vacations, or customer support can help new customers through an online application or site.

When asked about the potential performance issues, given that Speedshare’s servers are handling all of the activity, Cole said that it has supported up to 2,000 concurrent sessions.

Since a session might not have continuous activity and some might only be watching, Osix estimates this could represent 100,000 users. To get a sense of loading, it will only let in 10,000 new users at a time via invitation, until the company feels it has the capacity to open the doors to everyone.

The software has been in a private beta since July, during which time the company says it has attracted eight paid client enterprises that together have about 40,000 reps using the technology with their customers.

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A free version excludes uploading forms, creating a custom URL, generating analytics, or customization — plus it has an ad for the premium version that pops up every 10 minutes. Getting those features, and getting rid of the ad, costs $15/person/month, with negotiated prices for large companies.

Cole pointed to GoToMeeting and WebEx as the nearest competitors, although they are based on screen-sharing instead of collaboration. Oracle’s LiveLook offers something similar, he said, but it requires Javascript on any participating site.

The company’s previous product, Meet.fm, is an online meeting platform for sharing files, screens, and webcams, as compared to Speedshare’s co-browsing.

The seed funding, which represents the total raised so far, came from a group of investors that include Netsuite founder and CTO Evan Goldberg, Stella & Dot board chairman Mike Lohner, and Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder and managing partner of The Social+Capital Partnership.

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