11 ms·

Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition. We use Zo

Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition. We use Zoom heavily on our fully remote team because it works better than free alternatives like Skype and paid alternatives that we're already paying for like Slack. It's quite refreshing to see a tech company succeed by just making a better product and expecting that people will be willing to pay for it. They were able to grow so quickly in part because it was relatively easy for people to switch from other video conferencing solutions however. I'm not sure they will be able to build much competitive advantage other than just continuing to be a better product though. If Slack worked just as well we'd happily use it and stop paying for an additional service.

js2 8y ago
The top comment on the Zoom S-1 discussion said the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465860
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dplgk 8y ago
Never used zoom. I use Uberconference. What's the difference?
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Zoom requires native install and has better resolution.
  - neosavvy 8y ago
    I've used many different screensharing / video conferencing solutions. I especially miss the one called Screen Hero - purchased and killed by Slack. I must admit though Zoom has been great, and everyone on the team loves it. They also give you a great try-before-you-buy setup (unlimited 40 minute meetings)
    - tedmiston 8y ago
      Screenhero was the greatest for screen sharing with low latency. Still searching for a replacement.
      - neosavvy 8y ago
        There just isn't one. :(
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Zoom is like what WebEx would have been in an alternate universe without Cisco acquiring them.
jacquesc 8y ago
Once you install Zoom into all your workplace conference rooms (aka Zoom rooms), you're pretty much locked in. It's also pretty great from a work angle. We have remote workers who can Zoom into any meeting and it's seamless.
- mattnewport 8y ago
  We're a fully remote team so I haven't used Zoom rooms, that does seem like something of a moat if widely deployed in a company.
  - subway 8y ago
    On the bright side, room based deployments can also happen with open standards like H.323 and SIP. https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/categories/200110033-H-323-SIP https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/categories/200110033-H-323-...
  - jonathankoren 8y ago
    I’ve seen multiple large companies swap out their video conferencing system to whatever was the vc system du jour. (Vidyo, Highfive, Bluejeans, WebEx, Zoom) I can’t comment on how expensive it is, but it is a thing that happens fairly regularly.
- bo1024 8y ago
  Hmm, how does it work? If you have general-purpose hardware (e.g. a raspberry pi hooked up to a TV camera and microphone) then it seems you shouldn't be locked in...
  - MatthewMcDonald 8y ago
    It's general purpose hardware; our rooms use an Intel NUC with USB camera/mic, and an iPad to control it. There's no lock in as long as you're switching to something else that uses standard stuff.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  We had all Cisco/Tandberg rooms for years, then evaluated BlueJeans and HighFive, then trialed Zoom and Zoom won on the merits, even displacing existing deployed rooms with other tech. So, sure, we’re not about to rip out our Zoom Rooms, but that’s because of the “Zoom” part not the “Room” part of that phrase.
ec109685 8y ago
Google Meet and their conference room solution work fine where I am across thousand+ conference rooms.
- citizenkeen 8y ago
  My experience with Meet has been nothing but nightmarish.
- minton 8y ago
  It’s not surprising but Meet is Chrome only. Tat was a dealbreaker for me.
  - andreareina 8y ago
    It works with the latest Firefox.
    - tedmiston 8y ago
      Technically true that Meet works in Firefox, but in Firefox Developer Edition at least, the participants sidebar and controls on top of the video layer flicker incessantly during a call making for an unusable experience. I switch to Chrome for Meets daily because of this.
  - Godel_unicode 8y ago
    Has something changed since May 2018? https://blog.mozilla.org/webrtc/firefox-is-now-supported-by-google-hangouts-and-meet/ https://blog.mozilla.org/webrtc/firefox-is-now-supported-by-...
  - esolyt 8y ago
    Zoom requires installing a separate app. Why isn't that a dealbreaker but installing/using Chrome is?
    - kiwijamo 8y ago
      I would prefer a separate app if the only alternative was something that required Chrome.
burtonator 8y ago
> Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition I'm VERY convinced that listening to your customers and doing it WELL is a massive competitive advantage. I've been building an app for the last six months and have been listening to our customers pretty aggressively: https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/ Lots of HN users use Polar so smart crowd. Part of it has been to build in tools that allow me to manage all the information and to collect as much as possible. Analytics on everything the user does (but respect their privacy). We're interested in exceptions and things like that... One our big wins has been to integrate net promoter score and to build out a few tools to analyze the data. Cohort analysis is also key. I've been really focused on this and we're gaining about 1% additional retention per week over the last 2 months so this has been great to see it slowly climbing.
- owldimoon 8y ago
  I remember reading about this and liked what I saw, so believe me when I say this is coming from a supporter, but... Why? Why here? Stop that! You could have made your point without the plug and humblebrag.
  - colejohnson66 8y ago
    This. It feels like spam
  - tincholio 8y ago
    It's a constant pattern with this user.
m3kw9 8y ago
You think they don’t have a dedicated team just to try to build moat? That’s the whole challenge of a highly visible company like this, build moat, high switching costs etc
- mattnewport 8y ago
  I'm sure they do, I just don't see what it is yet.
projproj 8y ago
Besides finding it more reliable in general than alternatives I've tried, Zoom is the only conference software I've found that allows me to share my screen on Linux.
- AlexITC 8y ago
  Google meet works for me on Chrome, also, appear.in works great on Firefox.
  - donalhunt 8y ago
    Can echo this... Have been running a linux desktop for 10+ years and google meet is one of the few systems I don't have issues with. The drawback is that Chrome is a requirement for some functionality which kind of sucks. But I think that's particularly because they have been in the driving seat with webrtc for years and have implemented things in Chrome to test the water before proposing it as part of the standards. Check out Serge Lachapelle who has been leading Google's engineering efforts for years...
- edoceo 8y ago
  Works for me on Uber Conference, Gentoo/Xfce
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  Slack? At least my colleague shares his screen with me weekly and he uses Linux mint
  - andmarios 8y ago
    Slack is browser based, even the "native" client option. This means your colleague cannot choose which screen to share in Linux, so if he has two screens he has to go at great lengths to make it work properly (either share both or share a specific app instead of a screen). Also Slack's screen sharing quality is terrible and ofter you cannot read letters in the remote end's screen. Zoom's codec is much more crisp with text and graphics, almost like a native app running in your computer instead of video.
askafriend 8y ago
> They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel This just shows a lack understanding. They did something extremely novel: actually make the software work the way humans need it to. HN trivializing anything it doesn't understand gets tiring. Eric Yuan was the founding engineer of WebEx where he stayed for 14 years, even after the acquisition by Cisco. He left Cisco to finish what he started at WebEx because he knew Cisco wasn't doing what needed to be done and it was clear that every other piece of video conferencing software out there was terrible too. Talk to people who've evaluated the software in the market today and anyone who's tried all of the conferencing solutions will tell you that Zoom is head and shoulder above the rest, including Google Hangouts. Here's a choice quote from an interview he gave: "I got to this point in life by never giving up on my inspiration — which has always been to build a video communications solution that people will love. This has been a long-time passion of mine. I was born in mainland China. I first envisioned Zoom while I was a college student in China in the late ‘80s, and would take over 10-hour (each way) train rides to visit my girlfriend (now my wife). My desire for an easier way to see her face-to-face without the arduous travel became the impetus for my long path from student to entrepreneur. In 1997 I immigrated to San Jose, CA and secured a position as one of the founding engineers at a small start-up called Webex. I stayed with Webex for the next 14 years, and proudly grew the team I managed from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. In speaking with Webex customers, I realized that the solution suffered from some deep flaws due to its older architecture, particularly a lack of usability, reliability, and video quality. Simply put, it was hard to use and it didn’t work. I knew that Cisco needed to rebuild Webex from the ground up – from the back-end architecture to the user interface to the sales model. I told Cisco leadership, but they didn’t listen. I struck out on my own in 2011, and, fortunately, dozens of Webex’s most talented and visionary engineers soon joined me. Together we spent the next two years building Zoom 1.0, a unified video and web conferencing software that ran seamlessly across mobile, desktop devices, and conference room systems. Since then we’ve developed the product into the best video communications software in the world and built a global team of over 1,100 passionate people." Full interview here: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/tips-from-the-top-one-on-one-with-eric-yuan-founder-ceo-of-zoom/ https://thriveglobal.com/stories/tips-from-the-top-one-on-on...
- 8y ago
beamatronic 8y ago
I’m just hearing all these nice things about Zoom today - after the fact. What other companies have dedicated, hard working founders, who are focused on the customer?
- storgendibal 8y ago
  AirTable. I wonder how many other products in the enterprise space could be built by startups, by simply doing a much, much better job than incumbents, despite incumbent moats and lock-in. On the other hand, there are also examples of poor products that attempted to "solve" things like word processing better than MS Word or Google Docs and yet are simply much worse products than the incumbents. I think in the video conferencing space, all existing solutions were simply bad. Video conferencing has been bad everywhere I have worked and we just shrug our shoulders and joke that someone first needs to build strong AI, and only then will video conferencing be solved. Zoom decided to do something about it top-to-bottom, end-to-end. Very inspiring founder and company.
  - kpennell 8y ago
    Notion is amazing so far. So easy to use. Similar to airtable I think
hyperpallium 8y ago
MBA ideas of an economic moat - lock-in, stickiness, etc - are "dark patterns". But there are "light patterns": you can stay ahead in a technological race if you keep running; sales are easier if you are known as better; you get more informative feedback if you have more users, etc.
- matz1 8y ago
  Dark pattern is just a tools, it is especially useful when the product is not that good. Sometime as a sales or marketing person you are not really in control of the product, in these case these "dark" pattern are useful.
- radiusvector 8y ago
  > MBA ideas of an economic moat - lock-in, stickiness, etc - are "dark patterns". Dramatic statement. I am an SWE and an MBA. There are merits to thinking about every aspect of the business. Tech/Product is just one - an important one in a Saas company, but still just one. > But there are "light patterns": you can stay ahead in a technological race if you keep running; This is another way of saying "build it and they will come". You have to combine good business/economic sense with great products. Apple didn't just get to be Apple by staying ahead in a technological race. Arguably, they are behind a lot of other phone makers in specs. But they have a lot of people thinking about ecosystems, lock-in, marketing and other "MBA" concepts.
  - ColanR 8y ago
    > There are merits to thinking about every aspect of the business. This isn't a refutation of the parent - all you've said is that sometimes those dark patterns are worth exploiting. I'm rarely one for defending an absolute, so I think it would be far more interesting to say why it is worth using a 'dark pattern'. So far, it just feels like you're deflecting through masking the issue.
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      " all you've said is that sometimes those dark patterns are worth exploiting" Those are not 'dark patterns', moreover, the notion of building a quality experience is not beyond MBA's either.
sl1ck731 8y ago
I'm on a remote team as well that primarily uses Webex. It has kinda been the gold standard for me. Lately the audio has been declining and we started to use the Slack calls more often, which have been fantastic especially with the drawing tool. Other than drawing, voice, or screenshare is there something Zoom does that has made remote work easier? Or are you referring to better in terms of reliability and usability?
- mattnewport 8y ago
  By "works better" I mean that it largely implements all the same features of other competing video conferencing products but does them better / more reliably / with better usability. "It just works." Compared to Slack we have fewer problems with people dropping out of calls or losing audio or video and audio and video quality are generally better. Screen sharing is better quality and less buggy and let's you share individual windows. For calls with people outside the team we have fewer problems connecting than with Skype or Google Hangouts. It handles people calling in by phone or from mobile devices with poor connections more robustly. Overall no real revolutionary features, just consistently good execution.
- minton 8y ago
  My company pays for Slack and despite have 1Gbps fiber I constantly have issues hearing via Slack. It was so bad the entire company switched to Zoom just so the remote people could participate properly.
- philliphaydon 8y ago
  Webex.... I’d rather use Skype. We replaced webex at work with Google Meet. No longer have the issues we had with webex like people not being able to join or not hear audio.
- ajmurmann 8y ago
  90% of Webex calls I've been on for some reason didn't allow using computer audio. I couldn't even tell if it's disabled or somehow broken. That makes it hard to use good headphones. I usually ended up calling the webex phone number via hangouts, so that I can use a real headset. However, in a way it doesn't really matter because it's hard for other participants to use good audio equipment as well and so everyone else is using some echoey conference room speakerphone or worse put their phones on speakerphone. Zoom treats computer audio like a first class citizen and I've typically found that 80-100% of participants call in via that and end up using a good Sennheiser headset or similar. That makes for a so much better experience. Everytime I am on some damn webex with people yelling into their conference room speakerphones, I just want to hang up.
ignoramous 8y ago
> Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition. Isn't https://dialpad.com https://dialpad.com in the same category? I find their products to be on-par with zoom. There cannot be no competent players in the market, surely?
stunt 8y ago
They also offer better user experience (good features, intuitive UI) compared to some alternatives.
tru3_power 8y ago
Agreed- we recently switched from WebEx to Zoom at work and we also use Slack as well. Zoom is forsure the superior product when it comes to virtual meetings.
baxtr 8y ago
We use zoom and slack. Slack video is just terrible. It is so bad that I frequently change to zoom. So yes, I think they have deserved their place
jnurmine 8y ago
Many years ago I used a Telenor-connected Norwegian service which worked very, very well. I think the service was appear.in. When I used Zoom for the first time recently I got a déja vù (hope the accents are right). Silicon Valley indeed has the biggest drum, word about Zoom is spreading fast. But how many have heard of or used appear.in?
- jvican 8y ago
  Déjà vu
- paulryanrogers 8y ago
  Used Appear.in at my current employer for a while. IIRC it was P2P, like Skype used to be, with really easy onboarding though a single URL. (No sign up required.) But it didn't scale to more that 3 users. That may have changed since.
  - tk75x 8y ago
    https://appearin.helpscoutdocs.com/article/225-about-appear-in-pro https://appearin.helpscoutdocs.com/article/225-about-appear-... "The Freeplan can support up to 4 participants in a room, while the Pro plan supports up to 12 participants in a room at a time."
- MatthewMcDonald 8y ago
  We used appear.in for a few months, and paid for a premium "room". It was nice to just give someone a URL (no client or extension required). It could be better now, but we had a lot of problems with call quality.
e12e 8y ago
Why pay for zoom and slack? Is something lacking from https://zoom.us/feature/messaging https://zoom.us/feature/messaging vis-à-vis slack ? Easy 'bot integration perhaps (slack certainly have a lot of integrations out of the box)?
- chmars 8y ago
  I am a heavy Zoom video conference user but I had no idea about Slack-like chat features. Thank you!
- tedmiston 8y ago
  I think most people start with Slack and it becomes ingrained, then they outgrow Hangouts / Meet or try Zoom and realize it's less laggy and a better experience for video overall. I've never heard of their chat app before now.
- mattnewport 8y ago
  Slack has the stickiness / lock-in that I think Zoom may lack (at least for the video part). We have years of history in Slack that we wouldn't really want to lose moving to an alternative. We do also make fairly heavy use of integrations. Trialling and switching to an alternative would be a much bigger investment and less incremental than starting to use Zoom for video calls was, even for a relatively small startup like us. They may also have a bit of a marketing problem. I was vaguely aware they had some chat functionality but didn't realize it was as feature competitive with Slack as it appears on that page.
- e12e 8y ago
  Thanks for the replies;I guess there aren't any obvious reasons to use both (unless one really likes slack;I'm not sure that I do, although slack is bearable through wee-slack / weechat plugin). I am a little confused about the pricing model for zoom;it looks like it's roughly one "host" pr team lead + extra money for "rooms"? And/or one host pr team member if you want full flexibility?
GoldenMonkey 8y ago
Agreed. Between slack, skype and zoom. Zoom for video conferencing and sharing screens is so much better.

js2 8y ago

The top comment on the Zoom S-1 discussion said the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465860

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

dplgk 8y ago

Never used zoom. I use Uberconference. What's the difference?

paulddraper 8y ago
Zoom requires native install and has better resolution.
- neosavvy 8y ago
  I've used many different screensharing / video conferencing solutions. I especially miss the one called Screen Hero - purchased and killed by Slack. I must admit though Zoom has been great, and everyone on the team loves it. They also give you a great try-before-you-buy setup (unlimited 40 minute meetings)
  - tedmiston 8y ago
    Screenhero was the greatest for screen sharing with low latency. Still searching for a replacement.
    - neosavvy 8y ago
      There just isn't one. :(
Spooky23 8y ago
Zoom is like what WebEx would have been in an alternate universe without Cisco acquiring them.

jacquesc 8y ago

Once you install Zoom into all your workplace conference rooms (aka Zoom rooms), you're pretty much locked in. It's also pretty great from a work angle. We have remote workers who can Zoom into any meeting and it's seamless.

mattnewport 8y ago
We're a fully remote team so I haven't used Zoom rooms, that does seem like something of a moat if widely deployed in a company.
- subway 8y ago
  On the bright side, room based deployments can also happen with open standards like H.323 and SIP. https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/categories/200110033-H-323-SIP https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/categories/200110033-H-323-...
- jonathankoren 8y ago
  I’ve seen multiple large companies swap out their video conferencing system to whatever was the vc system du jour. (Vidyo, Highfive, Bluejeans, WebEx, Zoom) I can’t comment on how expensive it is, but it is a thing that happens fairly regularly.
bo1024 8y ago
Hmm, how does it work? If you have general-purpose hardware (e.g. a raspberry pi hooked up to a TV camera and microphone) then it seems you shouldn't be locked in...
- MatthewMcDonald 8y ago
  It's general purpose hardware; our rooms use an Intel NUC with USB camera/mic, and an iPad to control it. There's no lock in as long as you're switching to something else that uses standard stuff.
sokoloff 8y ago
We had all Cisco/Tandberg rooms for years, then evaluated BlueJeans and HighFive, then trialed Zoom and Zoom won on the merits, even displacing existing deployed rooms with other tech. So, sure, we’re not about to rip out our Zoom Rooms, but that’s because of the “Zoom” part not the “Room” part of that phrase.

ec109685 8y ago

Google Meet and their conference room solution work fine where I am across thousand+ conference rooms.

citizenkeen 8y ago
My experience with Meet has been nothing but nightmarish.
minton 8y ago
It’s not surprising but Meet is Chrome only. Tat was a dealbreaker for me.
- andreareina 8y ago
  It works with the latest Firefox.
  - tedmiston 8y ago
    Technically true that Meet works in Firefox, but in Firefox Developer Edition at least, the participants sidebar and controls on top of the video layer flicker incessantly during a call making for an unusable experience. I switch to Chrome for Meets daily because of this.
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  Has something changed since May 2018? https://blog.mozilla.org/webrtc/firefox-is-now-supported-by-google-hangouts-and-meet/ https://blog.mozilla.org/webrtc/firefox-is-now-supported-by-...
- esolyt 8y ago
  Zoom requires installing a separate app. Why isn't that a dealbreaker but installing/using Chrome is?
  - kiwijamo 8y ago
    I would prefer a separate app if the only alternative was something that required Chrome.

burtonator 8y ago

> Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition I'm VERY convinced that listening to your customers and doing it WELL is a massive competitive advantage. I've been building an app for the last six months and have been listening to our customers pretty aggressively: https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/ Lots of HN users use Polar so smart crowd. Part of it has been to build in tools that allow me to manage all the information and to collect as much as possible. Analytics on everything the user does (but respect their privacy). We're interested in exceptions and things like that... One our big wins has been to integrate net promoter score and to build out a few tools to analyze the data. Cohort analysis is also key. I've been really focused on this and we're gaining about 1% additional retention per week over the last 2 months so this has been great to see it slowly climbing.

owldimoon 8y ago
I remember reading about this and liked what I saw, so believe me when I say this is coming from a supporter, but... Why? Why here? Stop that! You could have made your point without the plug and humblebrag.
- colejohnson66 8y ago
  This. It feels like spam
- tincholio 8y ago
  It's a constant pattern with this user.

m3kw9 8y ago

You think they don’t have a dedicated team just to try to build moat? That’s the whole challenge of a highly visible company like this, build moat, high switching costs etc

mattnewport 8y ago
I'm sure they do, I just don't see what it is yet.

projproj 8y ago

Besides finding it more reliable in general than alternatives I've tried, Zoom is the only conference software I've found that allows me to share my screen on Linux.

AlexITC 8y ago
Google meet works for me on Chrome, also, appear.in works great on Firefox.
- donalhunt 8y ago
  Can echo this... Have been running a linux desktop for 10+ years and google meet is one of the few systems I don't have issues with. The drawback is that Chrome is a requirement for some functionality which kind of sucks. But I think that's particularly because they have been in the driving seat with webrtc for years and have implemented things in Chrome to test the water before proposing it as part of the standards. Check out Serge Lachapelle who has been leading Google's engineering efforts for years...
edoceo 8y ago
Works for me on Uber Conference, Gentoo/Xfce
rorykoehler 8y ago
Slack? At least my colleague shares his screen with me weekly and he uses Linux mint
- andmarios 8y ago
  Slack is browser based, even the "native" client option. This means your colleague cannot choose which screen to share in Linux, so if he has two screens he has to go at great lengths to make it work properly (either share both or share a specific app instead of a screen). Also Slack's screen sharing quality is terrible and ofter you cannot read letters in the remote end's screen. Zoom's codec is much more crisp with text and graphics, almost like a native app running in your computer instead of video.

askafriend 8y ago

> They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel This just shows a lack understanding. They did something extremely novel: actually make the software work the way humans need it to. HN trivializing anything it doesn't understand gets tiring. Eric Yuan was the founding engineer of WebEx where he stayed for 14 years, even after the acquisition by Cisco. He left Cisco to finish what he started at WebEx because he knew Cisco wasn't doing what needed to be done and it was clear that every other piece of video conferencing software out there was terrible too. Talk to people who've evaluated the software in the market today and anyone who's tried all of the conferencing solutions will tell you that Zoom is head and shoulder above the rest, including Google Hangouts. Here's a choice quote from an interview he gave: "I got to this point in life by never giving up on my inspiration — which has always been to build a video communications solution that people will love. This has been a long-time passion of mine. I was born in mainland China. I first envisioned Zoom while I was a college student in China in the late ‘80s, and would take over 10-hour (each way) train rides to visit my girlfriend (now my wife). My desire for an easier way to see her face-to-face without the arduous travel became the impetus for my long path from student to entrepreneur. In 1997 I immigrated to San Jose, CA and secured a position as one of the founding engineers at a small start-up called Webex. I stayed with Webex for the next 14 years, and proudly grew the team I managed from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. In speaking with Webex customers, I realized that the solution suffered from some deep flaws due to its older architecture, particularly a lack of usability, reliability, and video quality. Simply put, it was hard to use and it didn’t work. I knew that Cisco needed to rebuild Webex from the ground up – from the back-end architecture to the user interface to the sales model. I told Cisco leadership, but they didn’t listen. I struck out on my own in 2011, and, fortunately, dozens of Webex’s most talented and visionary engineers soon joined me. Together we spent the next two years building Zoom 1.0, a unified video and web conferencing software that ran seamlessly across mobile, desktop devices, and conference room systems. Since then we’ve developed the product into the best video communications software in the world and built a global team of over 1,100 passionate people." Full interview here: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/tips-from-the-top-one-on-one-with-eric-yuan-founder-ceo-of-zoom/ https://thriveglobal.com/stories/tips-from-the-top-one-on-on...

8y ago

beamatronic 8y ago

I’m just hearing all these nice things about Zoom today - after the fact. What other companies have dedicated, hard working founders, who are focused on the customer?

storgendibal 8y ago
AirTable. I wonder how many other products in the enterprise space could be built by startups, by simply doing a much, much better job than incumbents, despite incumbent moats and lock-in. On the other hand, there are also examples of poor products that attempted to "solve" things like word processing better than MS Word or Google Docs and yet are simply much worse products than the incumbents. I think in the video conferencing space, all existing solutions were simply bad. Video conferencing has been bad everywhere I have worked and we just shrug our shoulders and joke that someone first needs to build strong AI, and only then will video conferencing be solved. Zoom decided to do something about it top-to-bottom, end-to-end. Very inspiring founder and company.
- kpennell 8y ago
  Notion is amazing so far. So easy to use. Similar to airtable I think

hyperpallium 8y ago

MBA ideas of an economic moat - lock-in, stickiness, etc - are "dark patterns". But there are "light patterns": you can stay ahead in a technological race if you keep running; sales are easier if you are known as better; you get more informative feedback if you have more users, etc.

matz1 8y ago
Dark pattern is just a tools, it is especially useful when the product is not that good. Sometime as a sales or marketing person you are not really in control of the product, in these case these "dark" pattern are useful.
radiusvector 8y ago
> MBA ideas of an economic moat - lock-in, stickiness, etc - are "dark patterns". Dramatic statement. I am an SWE and an MBA. There are merits to thinking about every aspect of the business. Tech/Product is just one - an important one in a Saas company, but still just one. > But there are "light patterns": you can stay ahead in a technological race if you keep running; This is another way of saying "build it and they will come". You have to combine good business/economic sense with great products. Apple didn't just get to be Apple by staying ahead in a technological race. Arguably, they are behind a lot of other phone makers in specs. But they have a lot of people thinking about ecosystems, lock-in, marketing and other "MBA" concepts.
- ColanR 8y ago
  > There are merits to thinking about every aspect of the business. This isn't a refutation of the parent - all you've said is that sometimes those dark patterns are worth exploiting. I'm rarely one for defending an absolute, so I think it would be far more interesting to say why it is worth using a 'dark pattern'. So far, it just feels like you're deflecting through masking the issue.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    " all you've said is that sometimes those dark patterns are worth exploiting" Those are not 'dark patterns', moreover, the notion of building a quality experience is not beyond MBA's either.

sl1ck731 8y ago

I'm on a remote team as well that primarily uses Webex. It has kinda been the gold standard for me. Lately the audio has been declining and we started to use the Slack calls more often, which have been fantastic especially with the drawing tool. Other than drawing, voice, or screenshare is there something Zoom does that has made remote work easier? Or are you referring to better in terms of reliability and usability?

mattnewport 8y ago
By "works better" I mean that it largely implements all the same features of other competing video conferencing products but does them better / more reliably / with better usability. "It just works." Compared to Slack we have fewer problems with people dropping out of calls or losing audio or video and audio and video quality are generally better. Screen sharing is better quality and less buggy and let's you share individual windows. For calls with people outside the team we have fewer problems connecting than with Skype or Google Hangouts. It handles people calling in by phone or from mobile devices with poor connections more robustly. Overall no real revolutionary features, just consistently good execution.
minton 8y ago
My company pays for Slack and despite have 1Gbps fiber I constantly have issues hearing via Slack. It was so bad the entire company switched to Zoom just so the remote people could participate properly.
philliphaydon 8y ago
Webex.... I’d rather use Skype. We replaced webex at work with Google Meet. No longer have the issues we had with webex like people not being able to join or not hear audio.
ajmurmann 8y ago
90% of Webex calls I've been on for some reason didn't allow using computer audio. I couldn't even tell if it's disabled or somehow broken. That makes it hard to use good headphones. I usually ended up calling the webex phone number via hangouts, so that I can use a real headset. However, in a way it doesn't really matter because it's hard for other participants to use good audio equipment as well and so everyone else is using some echoey conference room speakerphone or worse put their phones on speakerphone. Zoom treats computer audio like a first class citizen and I've typically found that 80-100% of participants call in via that and end up using a good Sennheiser headset or similar. That makes for a so much better experience. Everytime I am on some damn webex with people yelling into their conference room speakerphones, I just want to hang up.

ignoramous 8y ago

> Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition. Isn't https://dialpad.com https://dialpad.com in the same category? I find their products to be on-par with zoom. There cannot be no competent players in the market, surely?

stunt 8y ago

They also offer better user experience (good features, intuitive UI) compared to some alternatives.

tru3_power 8y ago

Agreed- we recently switched from WebEx to Zoom at work and we also use Slack as well. Zoom is forsure the superior product when it comes to virtual meetings.

baxtr 8y ago

We use zoom and slack. Slack video is just terrible. It is so bad that I frequently change to zoom. So yes, I think they have deserved their place

jnurmine 8y ago

Many years ago I used a Telenor-connected Norwegian service which worked very, very well. I think the service was appear.in. When I used Zoom for the first time recently I got a déja vù (hope the accents are right). Silicon Valley indeed has the biggest drum, word about Zoom is spreading fast. But how many have heard of or used appear.in?

jvican 8y ago
Déjà vu
paulryanrogers 8y ago
Used Appear.in at my current employer for a while. IIRC it was P2P, like Skype used to be, with really easy onboarding though a single URL. (No sign up required.) But it didn't scale to more that 3 users. That may have changed since.
- tk75x 8y ago
  https://appearin.helpscoutdocs.com/article/225-about-appear-in-pro https://appearin.helpscoutdocs.com/article/225-about-appear-... "The Freeplan can support up to 4 participants in a room, while the Pro plan supports up to 12 participants in a room at a time."
MatthewMcDonald 8y ago
We used appear.in for a few months, and paid for a premium "room". It was nice to just give someone a URL (no client or extension required). It could be better now, but we had a lot of problems with call quality.

e12e 8y ago

Why pay for zoom and slack? Is something lacking from https://zoom.us/feature/messaging https://zoom.us/feature/messaging vis-à-vis slack ? Easy 'bot integration perhaps (slack certainly have a lot of integrations out of the box)?

chmars 8y ago
I am a heavy Zoom video conference user but I had no idea about Slack-like chat features. Thank you!
tedmiston 8y ago
I think most people start with Slack and it becomes ingrained, then they outgrow Hangouts / Meet or try Zoom and realize it's less laggy and a better experience for video overall. I've never heard of their chat app before now.
mattnewport 8y ago
Slack has the stickiness / lock-in that I think Zoom may lack (at least for the video part). We have years of history in Slack that we wouldn't really want to lose moving to an alternative. We do also make fairly heavy use of integrations. Trialling and switching to an alternative would be a much bigger investment and less incremental than starting to use Zoom for video calls was, even for a relatively small startup like us. They may also have a bit of a marketing problem. I was vaguely aware they had some chat functionality but didn't realize it was as feature competitive with Slack as it appears on that page.
e12e 8y ago
Thanks for the replies;I guess there aren't any obvious reasons to use both (unless one really likes slack;I'm not sure that I do, although slack is bearable through wee-slack / weechat plugin). I am a little confused about the pricing model for zoom;it looks like it's roughly one "host" pr team lead + extra money for "rooms"? And/or one host pr team member if you want full flexibility?

GoldenMonkey 8y ago

Agreed. Between slack, skype and zoom. Zoom for video conferencing and sharing screens is so much better.