Web conferencing products are synchronous in nature and support interaction between participants in a meeting or presentation format. Web conferencing consists of real-time electronic meeting and content delivery, screen and application sharing, text chat, and group document markup with electronic whiteboarding, augmented by audio, data and video. More-advanced features include integrated voice over IP audio, file sharing, remote control, content archiving, media streaming and polling.

Shared work spaces are team-oriented collaboration tools that provide virtual work spaces for sharing documents and files, supporting asynchronous and real-time collaboration activities, such as threaded discussions, document-based collaboration and chat functions.

Other forms of collaboration that are not included in this market definition include IM and chat, videoconferencing, audioconferencing, and a wide variety of social software, such as blogs, communities of practice, social bookmarking and tagging, expertise location, social network analysis, and wikis. A blog represents a form of asynchronous but collective Web publishing, usually in a journal-writing style. A community of practice represents a group of people engaged in joint experiences and shared practices, and it is similar to a network of Web bloggers. A wiki is a discussion system that includes server software for Web-based editing of, and commenting on, content created by others. Wikis include a simple text syntax for creating pages and linking pages in real time.