Why does Zoom seem so much more popular than those older conferencing options? The vid quality is just better? Or UI is easier? Or b/c you don’t need to sign up?
Thanks!
In: Technology
Zoom has a freemium business model, where a completely free version can be used for small calls. This attracts people to it. Alternatives like WebEx or gotomeeting had no such option.
It doesn’t cost anything to use. At some scales, these other platforms cost money to use.
No.
None of these are particularly groundbreaking, nor are they trying to be, they just offer a service thats basically the same type of video conferencing that has been around for 40 years, albeit of course tailored to a more modern audience. These companies don’t really compete on features of their product, they compete on sales.
There are some groundbreaking video conferencing systems out there, but these are generally only used in high-end business and education and come with a significant price tag.
A lot of the older videoconferencing options had problems with lag, stutter, failure to connect, difficulty connecting in certain network configurations, etc. Some of them relied on plugins that could be finicky to install or were often missing (e.g. Silverlight).
Zoom pretty much “just worked”. Most of the others now “just work” too, but they certainly carry some reputational baggage from the dark old days when things were hit or miss. So one part is being born late enough in the game that a lot of the enabling technologies (internet speed, network infrastructure, webcam driver quality, CPU/GPU performance) were mature.
There is a web standard called WebRTC that is now in all the major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge) that solves videoconferencing in-browser, without need of any downloads, and there are some services that are wrapping that in a reasonably easy to use way.
Video conferencing is fairly complex from a network point of view, so there are lots of ways in which it’s tricky to keep secure. Zoom has had a series of fairly careless-looking mistakes. To their credit they seem to be saying and doing the right things about it now, so they may yet earn back the trust they burned by their earlier decisions and mistakes.
It isn’t ground breaking, it is just easy to use, and in the right place at the right time. If COVID hadn’t happened, Zoom would have remained obscure.
Zoom is slightly easier to use than some of the alternatives for a few reasons:
1. It offers basic service for free, while many other video conferencing tools require a payment. Even small costs are enough to deter a lot of people.
2. You don’t have to sign up for an account to join a meeting. Skype, GoToMeeting, and Hangouts all require you to create an account in order to use them.
3. Zoom offers some tools that are useful for holding larger meetings and lectures, while some other tools like Skype are better for small meetings. For instance, Zoom allows for things like voting, or for a single user to administer the meeting and control how/when other people can contribute.
Thanks a lot for the answers. Makes sense!
Texting and video conferencing apps have this phenomenon. Every few years someone invents a technology that already exists and everyone jumps on board like it is something new. The issue is security – the purpose of security is to keep unwanted people out. It is therefore always going to make things harder to use – you put a lock on a door, now the user has to know how to use a key. There is a three way relationship in applications – flexibility and capability versus usability versus security. They each are in direct conflict. Zoom is very capable and flexible, and it is easy to use. Any guesses how good it’s security is?
For my organization, Zoom went to the top because of the amount of simultaneous video feeds up at once while not lagging and also having good quality. We often would test with upwards of 80 people all with webcams on. Being able to see everyone or focus on speaker only, and the ease of screen share made it a favorite. Can’t think of another product that can do that.
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