The rise of video conferencing

Ever since the coronavirus pandemic hit, sending millions of students and workers home. Lots and lots of us have defaulted to using Zoom for video conferencing, school, virtual happy hours, family chats with parents and even — in the case of the British government — cabinet meetings.

Zoom, which allows users to talk to up to 99 other people simultaneously, has emerged at the top of the pile with the app often leading the download charts in Apple’s app store with nearly 2.13m downloads around the world, placing the app second place behind TikTok.

It has turned its founder and chief executive Eric Yuan into one of the world’s richest people. Yuan, who owns 20% of the company’s shares, has seen his estimated net worth increase by more than $4bn to $7.9bn.

However, Zoom has come under fire as its ability to cope with the huge increase in user numbers while also ensuring platform safety, privacy, and security has been questioned. Eric S Yuan acknowledged that the surge in users was;

“presenting us with challenges we did not anticipate when the platform was conceived. We appreciate the scrutiny and questions we have been getting ⁠— about how the service works, about our infrastructure and capacity, and about our privacy and security policies. These are the questions that will make Zoom better, both as a company and for all its users,” he said.

These include clarifying the protective features that can help prevent “Zoombombing”, such as waiting rooms, passwords, muting controls, and limiting screen sharing and updating their privacy policy.
With the lockdown still currently in place, the increase in video conferencing apps like Zoom, Microsoft teams and Google hangouts will continue to see a growth in use and popularity.