As the holidays are upon us once again, it is company holiday party time. But for some the idea of a company party is just a vague memory of our previous 9-to-5 lives. As home-based entrepreneurs we work at home but we don't always work alone. Many of us have people we've worked with over the year but have never taken the time to get to know them on a personal level.

But it doesn't have to be that way this year. Not for your company. With widespread high speed Internet access around the world, you can get together and indulge a little in holiday festivities. While a regular company party can be plagued with embarrassing moments and too much alcohol, a virtual party isn't and it's a great time to just come together to build the relationship with people who help your business grow. There are many software and services you can use to hold a virtual company holiday party. Some are free while others are available at very affordable, small company friendly rates.

A popular web conferencing system you can use for free is Skype. You can do voice, text chat with up to 5 other people. It also works on a variety of computer systems which means you aren't limited when someone in the team is using a different system. The only down side is, you can only hold a video chat with one other person. Other popular and free systems include Yahoo! Messenger, UserPlane.

If you can handle paying a bit to host an online company party then web conferencing services will be a great way to go. This way you'll get more features like the ability to surf the internet together or even share files directly from your computer - just think of the things you could do with this. Using this system you can play videos or open photos right from your computer without having to upload or send anything.

Text, voice and video can all be used to communicate with larger groups of people using a web conferencing system. Another nice thing, many services allow you to record your online event. Depending on the service, you can purchase these services on a per minute, per hour or per day basis.

The best thing to do if you're planning on throwing a virtual holiday party is to plan ahead. The services of one company to the next are so different you'll want to try them out before deciding which one to use. While you're at it, why not host a party for you customers as well; they'll remember you for it during the year for sure.