The Recycler Issue 338 - Zooming

The future of home
office and remote working
– will we keep on Zooming?
There is an old proverb I like to use lately: “No crisis should go to waste”.
If I ask you which digital platform is the biggest winner of the COVID19
crisis, chances are you will say Zoom.
▲ Zoltan Matyas, Founder
of PrintEvery Consulting
Why it’s not Skype, Go To Meeting or
even Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp?
Did they just sleep on this crisis and let
it go to waste? How did Eric Yuan come
out of almost nowhere with Zoom and
knock everyone out in the video chat space?
What does the growing platform mean for
the future of home office and the virtual
workspace? Will Zoom become the biggest
new world changing platform like the
smartphones did 10 years ago?
I will not pretend to predict the future as
I never do but sometimes it is interesting
to read the signs. If the 6 moth NASDAQ
chart looks like this is usually a good sign…
As a publicly listed business traded on
Nasdaq, the Zoom’s stock price was
valued at $87.66 (€72) at the beginning of
February. Over the next two months, this
amount practically doubled, hitting $169.09
(€142.24) by the end of April and today it’s
at $427.55 (€365)
We live in a world where product names
become verbs. We can hoover the office
and fedex you goods and with the digital
revolution we are now tweeting, googling
whatsapping and skyping around all day.
Will the verb formerly known as skyping
become zooming? I have the feeling it will.
In a not so far future we may have to start
getting used to conversations like this:
“Shall we go for lunch? No, I can’t!
At 1 o´clock I have to zoom in to work.”
Zoom Share Prices
It was obvious that video apps will peak
during lock down but now it is over and
video calls are still part of our everyday
work life. I personally do more than ever
before.
Sales calls, performance review meetings,
customer meetings all migrated from the
phone to video calls. It seems that meetings
with higher importance now deserve a video
call not just a simple call and people are no
longer camera shy.
Within many others I became a big fan
of Tomas Pueyo during the COVID lock
down. He is a coronavirus influencer due to
a series of viral articles he wrote on Medium
about the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020

He put out some pretty good thoughtprovoking
stuff about how the pandemic
will transform our digital lives forever.
I recommend following his twitter feed
and reading his articles in Medium.
I will mention him later. First Let us try
to understand how on earth Zoom knocked
Skype out of the ring so fast.
Video chat is not new. We had Skype since
2003. And there were others like GOOGLE
HANGOUTS, GOTOMEETING,
MICROSOFT TEAMS…etc. They all had
a huge advantage against Zoom and a large
consolidated user base. Then there are the
giants like Facebook with the Messenger
app or WhatsApp or Google with the old
hangouts app. Even Cisco Webex with huge
corporate outreach and experience in the
channel. Yet Zoom came saw and conquered
just like Julius Caesar in ancient Rome.
As I mentioned before skyping became
a verb which just shows popularity and
consolidation. When Microsoft bought
Skype back in 2011 for 8.5 billion, they
had Live Messenger, but Skype was simply
cool. At the end of 2010, there were over
660 million worldwide users, with over 300
million estimated active each month as of
August 2015. At one point in February 2012,
there were 34 million users concurrently
online on Skype.
But regardless Skype´s numbers are still up: in
March 2020, Skype was used by 100 million
people monthly and by 40 million people
daily. Something has changed forever. Skype
is stuck with video meetings and its old.
It went thru many redesigns to compete
with trendier apps like Telegram and
WhatsApp and incorporated features nobody
When Microsoft bought Skype back in 2011
for 8.5 billion, they had Live Messenger,
but Skype was simply cool.
asked for. They really tried everything from
animated emojis to solutions seen at Snapchat
but the users kept on devaluating the app and
getting angry with constant updates
and annoying bugs.
Skype simply failed to understand the need
and could not find its place. The audience
did not want any of that singing dancing
stuff. Everyone just wanted the good old easy
to use skype video chat back without any
more complications.
On top of that, competition has been
increasing. Players like Slack entered
the game which distracted Microsoft
big time. They started focusing on the
Teams app aimed to work and corporate
communications. They integrated video
chat to teams and with that skype became
even more of an obsolete tool.
And then came Zoom.
Just to put things in context. In 2019
December there were 10 million video
chats on Zoom daily. It was used mainly
by podcasters as sound quality was great.
It served a niche techie market. In April
2020 10 million became 300 million.
Yes daily users…
According to Datanyze.com the market
share landscape of technology used for
video conferencing currently looks
like this:
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Market share of top web conferencing technologies in the United States, as of April 2020
15.19%
18.72%
Zoom - 42.82%
Adobe Connect - 2.88%
2.64%
2.88%
3.14%
3.43%
42.82%
11.16%
GoToWebinar - 18.72%
Cisco WebEx - 11.16%
ON24 - 3.43%
GoToMeeting - 3.14%
TANDBERG Video
Conferencing - 2.64%
Other technologies
- 15.19%
Market share of the top three web conferencing technologies in Germany
and the United Kingdom, as of April 2020
Germany
United Kingdom
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Zoom
GoToWebinar
Cisco WebEx
Source: Statista, Datanyze
The number of Zoom domains in the
United States rapidly increased in 2020,
reaching over 15,600 last month, according
to Statista data.
The top three web conferencing platforms
in the United States hit more than a
70% market share as of April, data gathered
by LearnBonds (https://learnbonds.com/
news/top-3-us-web-conferencing-apps-hitover-70-market-share/)
has revealed. With
42.8% market share, Zoom ranked as the
leading web conferencing platform among
American users.
I am still not sure how Facebook and its
messenger app missed out so outrageously on
this but probably they were tied up with fake
news issues and privacy concerns.
Of course, with all popular new applications
apart of the praising voices and happy tech
bloggers there were voices raised about
The number of Zoom domains in the United
States rapidly increased in 2020, reaching over
15,600 last month, according to Statista data.
security issues especially sharing sensitive
corporate data over Zoom. The guys in San
Jose California reacted quick and decided
to provide “end-to-end encryption” to all
customers not just the ones who are paying.
Will it become a new platform? It certainly
has the potential.
Let us go back to the line of thoughts of Mr
Pueyo and other tech philosophers. They all
pretty much agree that smartphones have
fundamentally changed human behavior.
Smartphones today are not only used to
communicate but they changed how we
listen to music, take notes, how we choose
restaurants and what we do with our idle
time on the toilet.
I mean we could always order pizza from
the computer but now we know where the
pizza boy at any moment and nobody will
ever again need to look for a taxi stand.
Road trip maps sales disappeared and
unfortunately for our industry nobody
prints the trip itinerary anymore. Built
in navigation sales in new cars are down
as maps on the smartphone are way
better and no cars are sold without
smartphone integration.
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It is very possible that the increasing
popularity of video apps will trigger
the development of things we never
seen before.
Think of the possibilities of work,
entertainment, and educational sectors.
Think of sales, R&D and Project teams
keeping together once the work video
meeting is over just to chat around a bit.
I know fellow sales directors and team
leaders who have been organizing
regular daily coffee breaks on Zoom
during the lock down while everyone
was in home office.
Think of Press conferences, online
coaching and consulting services and even
It is very possible that the increasing popularity
of video apps will trigger the development
of things we never seen before.
group of friends coming together to have
a beer after work on Zoom because now
they can include friends from abroad.
Right at this second whilst writing
this article it just occurred to me to set
up a meeting with my old high school
classmates back in Hungary for a
zoom session.
But let us stay feet on the ground
and focus on what is happening with
work.
The Institute for Future says that
85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030
are not invented yet.
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Today it is normal that more and more jobs
only need 3 things.
1. Your time
2. Internet access
3. A device.
All three can be anywhere and in theory
geography in terms of work is irrelevant.
BUT!!! The general view is still that it is
better that employees are physically together
in the office. Why?
The most common reasons I hear are:
• They can be controlled by the boss
• It’s easier to deal with issues live and treat
problems instantly
• It’s quicker and more efficient to ask for
advice and hold a spontaneous meeting
• Motivational conversations
• Or even just to chat around the good
old watercooler.
To understand how a virtual space can
overtake the physical office we need to
understand what are the functions that
need to be solved efficiently digitally.
Let me list a few things here about an office:
• Physically separate work life from
private life
• The real-life team playing experience
• Pear to Pear motivation
• A quick and spontaneous brain storming
meeting to create flow of ideas
• Flipchart meetings with drawings which
became ideas
• Post its
• Motivational speeches
• Instant answers
• Personal influencing, meta
communication
These are normal things in the office but
not really solved digitally. We do not have
a great flip chart app and the digitalization
of handwritten notes are still not seamless.
When it comes to project management
movable and replaceable post its on a board
are great.
Don’t get me wrong we have applications
for all of this stuff like Miro (https://miro.
com/) the on line white board, Trello
(https://trello.com/ for an excellent
online Kanban and yes you can digitalise
hand written notes on pretty much any
tablet but until all this is getting solved
Imagine if all this is available within an online
virtual and immersive workplace experience.
by one great easy to use app I will still
like to go to the office. Okay… well…
at least two days a week…
And this is where the opportunity lies for
Zoom who already announced that the app
will become a platform. This will allow
other applications to be integrated. The
new applications will further strengthen
Zoom.
Think of what the Appstore did with
smartphones. The logic behind Steve Jobs
masterplan was fairly simple: the greater
number of high-quality apps are available
the more people will think they need a
smartphone.
On May 8 th at 12pm PST Zoom held the
Live finale of its app marketplace contest
where the task was to develop apps to help
Zoom users. Out of more than 600 apps
10 made it to the final fighting for a chance
to win $2million in funding and finally
Docket won with an app that makes office
environment online with shared calendars,
notebooks archives…etc
If you are a venture capital investor you can
read more on this here: https://blog.zoom.
us/announcing-the-zoom-app-marketplacecompetition-finalists/
and here: https://blog.
zoom.us/docket-zoom-app-marketplacecompetition-winner/
and here: https://www.
dockethq.com/calendar-app/
Now if you look at the 10 finalists,
they are all existing apps but who
wants to work in 10 different app
environments at work? Imagine if all
this is available within an online
virtual and immersive workplace
experience.
And we are still only talking about how
Zoom can change the new way we work.
Next step could be how we play. What if
games become available on the platform?
Gamification of work-related tasks are
an emerging trend. What if developers
start attacking the hundred years old
educational system? The more developers
on board the stronger a platform like
Zoom can become.
But all this doesn’t really matter since
the robots are coming and will take
over anything. ■
Zoltan Matyas
Zoltan Matyas is a Digital Marketing
and Sales specialist in the independent
imaging industry with over 15 years
of front-line sales experience. He is
a regular contributor in industry
publications and speaker at industry
events.
FEATURED
You can connect with him on
LinkedIn or email him at zoltan@
printevery.com.
A R TIC L E
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