Trailing the widely popular invention of the first camera phone, the flash drive, bluetooth, the iPhone, Facebook, and Youtube at the beginning of the twenty first century, the video conferencing platform, Zoom, which was released in 2013 had many innovations to compete with. Other platforms such as Skype were already on the rise prior to the release of Zoom, which presented a challenge as the creators of Zoom aimed for success. By the time Zoom was first advertised to the public, Skype already had over 250 million users per month with many years of experience ahead of Skype to work out kinks in the platform.
In the midst of a competitive market of virtual platforms similar to Zoom, the idea of capitalism is a driving force that pushed existing and emerging companies to be better and reach more users every day. To be at the top, innovators had to constantly be ready to make changes and improvements to their inventions because if they were too slow someone else could get there first. So, for Zoom to emerge in popularity and surpass the experimental phase of the theory of Innovation Diffusion, it took Eric Yuan’s strategic development and marketing of his video conferencing platform. Using his experience working for Cisco’s Webex platform, Yuan wanted to venture on his own to create Zoom, and fix several of the things he did not like about Webex and Skype. Focused on creating a more perfect video conferencing experience no matter what device someone is calling in on and creating a simple platform was Yuan’s priority when he decided to develop Zoom. The simplicity Yuan was so focused on (as he explains in the youtube video linked below) prompted the wave of early adopters during the adoption phase of the platform. With an installation process that was more user friendly than Zoom’s competitors, it drew much attention from corporations and schools.
👂https://youtu.be/ICgehQ1xd24 👂
Listen to Zoom creator, Eric Yuan, for insight behind his journey
The value of a high functioning video conferencing platform is even greater today than it was at its first emergence almost twenty years ago. With the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom has undergone an unpredictably rapid growth in users because of its adoption by schools, workplaces, and governments to shift their daily functions online. Whereas before the pandemic, Zoom was moderately successful, the software is now widely considered to be much more functional and “better” than Skype or Webex.
Check out the link above for more insight into Zoom’s strategy for success
With their users skyrocketing, Zoom has definitely transitioned as a technology into maturation because of the 3 million users throughout the world in a matter of eight years. While unprecedented, Zoom has been able to keep up with the sudden influx of participants effectively, and continues to improve the platform, so it is likely Zoom is here to stay. Another factor of its continued success even as we transition out of the pandemic is the reliance educators now have in the platform. As many forms of education shift to be online permanently and even forms of meetings such as interviews or board meetings will be held through Zoom in the future, the platform will continue to fulfill the innovation diffusion theory approaching saturation. It is inevitable that late adopters and laggards will be forced to download and use Zoom or a similar platform because of the technologically reliant direction our society is moving towards.
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