Zoom

Submission 10,295

About

Zoom or Zoom Video Communications is a video conferencing service company providing services such as online meetings, chat and mobile collaboration. The site is popular for those who study online remotely or work from home and during the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, the site gained notoriety for being an essential tool during a time of social distancing.

History

In 2011, an engineer from Cisco Systems, Eric Yuan, founded Zoom was founded in 2011 and services began in January 2013.^[1] In 2015, David Berman became president of the company and in March 2019, Zoom filed to go public on the NASDAQ.^[2]

Highlights

2020 Coronavirus Outbreak

In March 2020, Forbes^[7] announced that "Zoom CEO Eric Yuan Is Giving K-12 Schools His Videoconferencing Tools For Free" amid the school closure announcements. That week the Facebook^[5] group Zoom Memes For Selfquaranteens was created. On TikTok, various teens shared videos about moving school to Zoom. On March 12th, TikTokers @vladimir_pudding_ and @eitan uploaded videos about having school in Zoom (shown below). Their videos gained over 755,000 likes and 552,000 likes respectively in six days.

On March 12th, Redditor bbcheu posted an image to r/CalPolyPomona ^[8] with the caption, "Call of 2020 commencement via Zoom" which recieived over 390 points (99% upvoted) in six days. On March 16th, Redditor RedOnTheRail posted another Zoome meme to r/MemeEconomy^[8] (shown below, right).

On March 17th, NYTimes^[6] published an article regarding Zoom parties, events, classes and memes. That same day, YouTube account Chino Valley USD uploaded a student choir concert video recorded on Zoom (shown below). The video garnered over 57,700 views in a day.

On March 18th, Twitter user @PincheNunu^[10] tweeted a photo of a dog sleeping with the caption, "Profesor on zoom: Hello can anyone hear me? Me:" (Shown below). The tweet accumulated over 50 likes in a day.

Traffic

In Zoom's first three months of service, the company gained over one million users.^[3] On March 15th, 2020, Twitter user @ankitkr0^[4] noted, "@zoom_us has exploded since January Despite this heavy increase in usage due to COVID, @ericsyuan specifically asked the team to not ramp up marketing & promotions. He said, 'If you leverage this opportunity for money, I think that’s a horrible culture'" (shown below). The tweet gained over 1,900 likes and 417 retweets in three days.