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akash.nu

macrumors G4
Original poster
May 26, 2016
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So I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Everyone knows that Zoom suddenly became really popular across the globe in this social distancing setup. I wonder why Zoom instead of already established/ popular cross platform services such as Skype?!

Food for thought.
 
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So I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Everyone knows that Zoom suddenly became really popular across the globe in this social distancing setup. I wonder why Zoom instead of already established/ popular cross platform services such as Skype?!

Food for thought.
It's easy to use. You can join a meeting without an account. You can join via weblink without installing apps or plugins. Plus it works well. When you have easy, works and free to cheap. You have a winner.

The quality of screen sharing for collaboration is also much better in terms of quality compared to its competitors. Had been using it the last 4 years at my company
 
So I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Everyone knows that Zoom suddenly became really popular across the globe in this social distancing setup. I wonder why Zoom instead of already established/ popular cross platform services such as Skype?!

Food for thought.

In addition to the reasons offered in the posts already made by both @velocityg4 and @ipponrg, I'd add that with Zoom you can have multiple windows - hence, several viewers in several locations, open at once - whereas whenever I have attended a Skype meeting, or conversation, it has been confined to myself and the person (or people) I was speaking with at the other computer, or end, and was limited to two locations.
 
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Zoom is not authorized and banned for security reasons at my company. The only authorized tools are Teams, Skype for Business, and WebEx. I find Skype the simplest for quick ad hoc meetings and you can add additional people to call as necessary. We use Team and WebEx for larger meetings so people can join the call themselves.
 
Zoom is not authorized and banned for security reasons at my company. The only authorized tools are Teams, Skype for Business, and WebEx. I find Skype the simplest for quick ad hoc meetings and you can add additional people to call as necessary. We use Team and WebEx for larger meetings so people can join the call themselves.

Yes, I have heard that security concerns have been expressed about Zoom; however, it seems to be both easy and convenient, which seem to over-ride whatever reservations exist about security.
 
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So I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Everyone knows that Zoom suddenly became really popular across the globe in this social distancing setup. I wonder why Zoom instead of already established/ popular cross platform services such as Skype?!

Food for thought.

They have a pretty full featured free tier. That's enough for a lot of people...
 
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Yes, I have heard that security concerns have been expressed about Zoom; however, it seems to be both easy and convenient, which seem to over-ride whatever reservations exist about security.

One of the primary issues was Zoom meetings were a super simple URL scheme, where it was *.zoom.us/<simple-numeric-id>, so it wasn't that hard to make a script that checks for active meetings, join them (uninvited), and, well, do "inappropriate things" with a video camera :oops:

A few weeks ago, they made passwords mandatory, so you have to have both the URL and that code (it's still pretty basic). With companies, you can setup specific accounts that have access, etc., and make it much more secure, many of the issues were casual users.
 
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I'd resisted Zoom because I'd heard of the security issues.

Over Easter, since I couldn't be with family, I initiated a group FaceTime call, and while it worked pretty well, those floating boxes were too cute by half. They quickly became tiresome. We only had four on the call. Why not split the screen into quadrants? Or have three to one side and the person speaking on the rest of the screen?

Based on what you guys are saying, I'd like to try Zoom, though it may be harder to convince family since we all have iDevices with FaceTime built in.
 
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The large number of exotic backgrounds. People like to pretend where they could be during this pandemic.
Also, the large number of mini-frames is popular for large gatherings.. I believe Microsoft Teams only allows a max of 4 windows.
 
Not having to register is a big deal to get people to do it. If I could mute annoying people without being the admin, it would be even better.
I would buy it, if it weren't an ongoing subscription; ugh.
 
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Zoom is throwing a lot of outside resources into beefing up security now but successful hacks are part of what brought that response on. A lot of companies won't allow their employees to use Zoom for their work at home efforts yet. Wall Street Journal has a (paywalled) piece up on Zoom's attention to shoring up security.


Among the security companies that Zoom has now brought on are British security vendor NCC Group PLC, New York-based Trail of Bits Inc., Tempe, Ariz.-based Bishop Fox and Praetorian Security Inc., located in Austin, Texas. Zoom is using threat-intelligence services from CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. and DarkTower, the threat-intelligence arm of Queen Associates Inc., Zoom said.

Zoom Chief Executive Eric Yuan in an April 1 blog post announced Zoom was freezing product development and pledged to spend the next 90 days fixing the company’s security problems. “I really messed up,” he told The Wall Street Journal days later, and said that the company would now prioritize security over ease-of-use.
 
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I'd never heard of Zoom until January this year. I did an online taster for a course I might do later in the year. It was done via Zoom. All of a sudden, everyones using it. I'll be using it later this morning. It works because its free and easy to use.
 
I'd never heard of Zoom until January this year. I did an online taster for a course I might do later in the year. It was done via Zoom. All of a sudden, everyones using it. I'll be using it later this morning. It works because its free and easy to use.

Zoom has been around in the B2B corporate sector since sometime now. Just the explosion happened in the B2C direct to consumer market.
 
All these years I have never felt any appeal for video calling but these past two months I have used it a lot.

For work I have been using my mandated tools, namely Skype for Business and Webex, I like both (Webex seems more rock solid but that is just a feeling).

For personnel use regular Skype is just plain awful, a degraded and absurd UI that seems made up by what 50 year olds think teenagers like. Zoom is quite appealing as it seems much more simple and focused while offering the same functionality, I can understand the urge to use it.

Using a smarphone, as I am European, Facetime is rather nonexistent therefore I end using WhatsApp video calls for plain seamless of use and ubiquity.
 
Those that have used it for a long time, aren't really in the position to just pull the plug in hard times either..

Security issues, or no security issues.. However, when you see things like "The Military is no longer using it", you may wanna pay attention. Depends on a cases by case biases i guess.

And probably also, no real competition which stands up to 100+ Real-time, all going off at once.
 
Zoom is not authorized and banned for security reasons at my company. The only authorized tools are Teams, Skype for Business, and WebEx. I find Skype the simplest for quick ad hoc meetings and you can add additional people to call as necessary. We use Team and WebEx for larger meetings so people can join the call themselves.
Really odd you and I were discussing WebEx not too long ago late last year.
 
We use teams at work. If it’s for personal use I don’t use any. I just use iMessage or a phone call. Video calling has no appeal for me.
Yes I don't even like audio chat. I'm old enough to have typed if I wanted to chat with people as the only choice.
 
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