The Success Story of Zoom

On October 13, 2020, in a presentation given by Vivian Bui, HBHS Project X covered the topic of Zoom: its success, its pitfalls, the origins, and held an open discussion about where we thought the future of teleconferencing was going to go.

With the “new normal” of the COVID-19 pandemic allowing us to become increasingly more familiar with virtual activity, many brands and companies have surfaced and greatly profited from the demand for remote methods of working and learning, and unless you have been living under a rock for the last eight months, you have probably heard of the teleconferencing service app, Zoom. Highly rated for functionality and accessibility, Zoom has surpassed other services such as Skype and Google Meets, becoming the most downloaded app in the iOS app store, after TikTok.

The merits of Zoom tend to be in the little things: the smooth screen sharing, virtual backgrounds, the beautification filter, the fact that you can record meetings, and the way people can simply join without logging in. The service allows free forty-minute calls with a one-hundred person cap allowing anyone in the world to utilize Zoom. Many have also said that they feel as though Zoom is much more crisp, clean, and aesthetically pleasing than Skype or Google Meets.

Most importantly, there is a cohesive and well-run customer feedback service in which users can submit qualms about issues or bugs they may have experienced, which is immediately assessed by the Zoom team and considered when updating the program.

Zoom is valued for multiple reasons, especially considering the obvious factor of the COVID-19 pandemic. As schools around the country have resorted to remote learning, the service has been the primary method of online learning as it offers free service to most K-12 learning institutions. Furthermore, Zoom has proven to be a valuable tool for many businesses and groups in conferencing during the global pandemic.

In 2011, Zoom was created when Eric Yuan and forty others left their jobs at the teleconferencing firm, Cisco WebEx, as a result of angel investors betting on their venture for clean and innovative video conferencing. By 2015, Zoom had a partnership with digital communication firm Slack and had integrated with software company Salesforce, going public in 2019 with a valued worth of sixteen billion USD.

There is no doubt that since then, Zoom has only grown and become more successful, and continues to do so every day. Seen in March 2020, a month characterized by the sudden closure of schools and businesses and “stay-at-home” orders internationally, Zoom saw twenty million new users and a sudden growth rate of 213% in first time installs.

In the presentation we hosted, the emphasis we placed upon the story of Zoom was the fact that even though there existed hundreds of other successful competitors in the field of teleconferencing, because Zoom focused on quality over quantity and profit, they became extremely successful in the long run.

However, there has been the question of whether or not Zoom’s success is sustainable, or if rapid growth will disappear if or when the pandemic is resolved. If society returns to a state of semi-normalcy and people return back to school and their jobs, will we have progressed past a great need for Zoom?

Many have also voiced concerns about privacy and security regarding the service. “Zoombombing” has become a viable issue, in which people randomly join Zoom meetings without automated passwords and broadcast inappropriate materials, which can be especially harmful to school Zoom meetings with minors present. Otherwise, many older devices have not been able to support new Zoom updates, putting those who do not have access to the proper technology at a disadvantage.

Still, Zoom continues to dominate the videoconferencing industry, currently being worth 145.49 billion USD as of October 26, 2020, and Eric Yuan, CEO, has made nearly 12 billion USD since March, ranking in the top 400 richest people in the world. And the success of Zoom shows no sign of stopping in the near future.

The following question was posed to our general members at HBHS Project X: “Is Zoom here to stay?”

In an open discussion, many of us felt as though Zoom had transformed the climate in which modern businesses operated, and that many firms were likely to continue to use Zoom for cost effectiveness, compared to the funds that used to be spent on in-person conferences.

“I have no doubt that Zoom is here to stay. Considering the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, I definitely see people working from home for a long time to come,” said Amber Juarez, HBHS Project X club member and blog writer for our website. “I believe that the impact of Zoom has been so great that people will continue to use it to communicate with loved ones that they cannot otherwise see in person.”

Others of us claimed that they felt that Zoom would see a fall in general users if or when the pandemic is resolved, seeing as students would return to school and people would return to their jobs and in-person conferencing.

“Meetings can be more productive instead of the spending time and money on catering, talking, and mingling before and throughout meetings” said Emily Fennell, Project X general member. “When a meeting is held on zoom there is limited room and time for non-work related socializing...meaning that meetings are shorter and a more effective use of everybody’s time.”

Almost unanimously, we all agreed that Zoom would continue to evolve regardless of the future concerning the pandemic, and to the fact that Zoom’s story is an accurate model of contemporary business success.

“Zoom is the definition of a successful business,” says Amber. “It presents a unique solution to a difficult and pressing issue and truly stands out against all other competitors.”