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I am out of the loop as to why Zoom is suddenly "blowing up". Even my workplace is using it now. Previously, we were using either Skype, Webex, or Jitsi. What d

I am out of the loop as to why Zoom is suddenly "blowing up". Even my workplace is using it now. Previously, we were using either Skype, Webex, or Jitsi. What does Zoom offer that the other three doesn't?

malandrew 7y ago
It just works. Never used Jitsi, but the experience is far superior to Skype and Webex.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  Could you elaborate on this? In what way is it superior?
  - Linkd 7y ago
    From experience with many options, and having used zoom for over a year now: Video quality is better, audio quality is better, video and audio are streamed separately and during low bandwidth situations audio takes priority over video (video starts lagging but audio remains as perfect as possible), seamless to join meetings even when youre not a 'user' of their ecosystem, and has neat UX like informing you that your microphone is soft-muted when it notices you speaking, etc etc.
    - nutshell89 7y ago
      Whenever I've used Zoom from my home connection during the last few weeks, I've experienced laggy, blocky video, occasional audio dropouts (with frequent alert messages within the app to restart the Zoom client's audio), disturbingly high CPU usage, and meetings which take minutes for everyone to join. Honestly in my experience, there's no real benefit when compared with Skype, Hangouts, or Discord except for the frequently mentioned large 50 person+ video streaming.
- distances 7y ago
  My attempts at Zoom meetings were met with distorted audio, and the organizer quickly changed to Jitsi in both cases. It worked much better for whatever reason.
gnulinux 7y ago
My therapist tried a whole bunch of different services with different clients. We first tried doxy.me which is a HIPAA approved tele-medical service. But the quality was HORRIBLE, it was unusable, so she asked me if I would be ok using Skype (since Skype is not encrypted) I said ok (since I need the session more than it being secure). It was fine. Then we tried Zoom next time around. I thought Zoom was better in terms of quality and "just works out of the box". Just a datapoint. Getting video streaming correct is actually pretty hard, it's part of what I'm working on for my day job, and it's a very challenging problem.
- jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
  Why is it hard? Video streaming has been a thing for a couple decades. I am genuinely curious.
  - TwoBit 7y ago
    The companies selling video streaming and conferencing have other issues, such as service costs. And they typically don't retain very good engineering teams.
  - jonex 7y ago
    It's hard because it's dependant of other systems that are often not fully functional. The things that needs to work for a video call is: The network must be reasonably reliable and not overloaded. The camera must be configured and not privacy blocked. The correct recording device must be used, it must be recording (opportunity for both user error and OS issues here). If hardware codes are used (a requirement on lower end devices) it must support low enough bitrates, must have the right options. Typically all these things are slightly different between different devices and operating systems. It's typically easy to build a proof of concept with great quality and reliable connections between two given devices over a given network. It's super hard to make a product that is reliable enough that millions of users only rarely run into issues.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    When you stream a Youtube or Netflix video, you can download several seconds ahead over boring old HTTP. It's a one-to-one link, you don't have to upload anything, and you don't need access the user's camera or microphone. To be competitive in videoconferencing these days, you need: * Low latency, so people don't talk over each other * Video and audio compression that doesn't get confused by dropped packets. * Setup so easy first-time users won't be late to their video job interview. * Group calls for 10+ people * HD quality * Adaptive bitrates, for users on different speed links * Skip-free audio even if a user's link goes from uncongested to heavily congested. * Reliable support for every webcam and USB headset on the market, and hot-plugging them during the call, and changing OS permissions during the call. * Reliable support for unreliable bluetooth headsets and unreliable bluetooth dongles. * Echo cancellation that works with every device and room configuration going. Including devices that have their own built-in echo cancellation. * Audio that's clear even in the presence of background noise, and different people at different distances from the microphone. * Users behind every type of misconfigured firewall you can imagine. * Roaming between different Wifi access points, and between wifi and cell data while on a call (including links with no connectivity sometimes) * Never (or almost never) forcing a user to update their software at the moment they're trying to join an important meeting or job interview. * Update support (or long-term compatibility) for users who don't have administrator rights. * Graceful recovery if the user sleeps then resumes their device. * Screen sharing that retains good readability, even if a user has unwisely made the text on their presentation a bit small. * Screen sharing of Youtube videos without making them blurry or choppy, even if they're embedded in presentations. * CPU and battery efficiency. * Free of charge * All the above on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux and WebRTC.
golergka 7y ago
It haven't spent 10 years being slowly killed by Microsoft's worst product practices.
api 7y ago
It works, the quality is decent, and it doesn't max out 4-8 cores for a simple video call. The others don't work, are Microsoft UI dumpster fires (Skype), or consume vast amounts of CPU (anything WebRTC for some reason).
- fyfy18 7y ago
  On Linux (Skylake u-i7) Zoom maxes out my CPU :-(
  - api 7y ago
    I meant it works relatively speaking. To be fair Google meet is usable too, but Zoom does better with huge numbers of participants. There seems to be a law that states that all messenger apps must be bloated slow junk and must accumulate cruft over time until they turn to mush.
  - aledthemathguy 7y ago
    I came to the conclusion that if you want to run Linux, you must run Windows as well :) Sucks, but true.
    - silon42 7y ago
      Hopefully in a VM (sandbox), like all proprietary software should be ran.
  - slavik81 7y ago
    I found that making the window smaller greatly reduced CPU usage. It seems to be doing the video decoding on the CPU.
- true_religion 7y ago
  What would Zoom use when it’s working in the browser if it’s not WebRTC?
  - jonex 7y ago
starpilot 7y ago
Cisco certainly isn't using Zoom. My old school corp employer is on Webex, along with using SAP and other bullshit represented by good sales teams.
- organsnyder 7y ago
  Cisco owns Webex, so of course they'd use it. I've suffered through Webex with a previous employer and a current client, and it's just horrible. GoToMeeting is much better, and Zoom is better yet.
- sah2ed 7y ago
  The founder of Zoom (Eric Yuan) used to be a respected leader at Cisco but he eventually quit to focus full-time on Zoom. Cisco didn’t fully understand the opportunity he saw to reduce the amount of friction needed to use most video conferencing (VC) software tools, including the tools by Cisco, which is understandable since Cisco was afraid they might cannibalize sales in their VC hardware business.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
1. The gallery view (aka 'Brady Bunch' view) works significantly better than any other system, with a large number of users. Especially now where everyone is working remotely and you have large group chats IMO this is the biggest factor. 2. Related to the above, I have rarely, if ever, had a problem with Zoom quality. 3. The onboarding for new users (basically just share a link) is dead simple. Zoom realized that the install process was a significant barrier and did more than anyone else to lower that barrier (of course, with lots of security/privacy issues to boot, but your average Joe isn't aware of those). 4. A smaller factor but perhaps a bigger one for people using Zoom for personal reasons (e.g. teenagers and college kids) are the 'fun' features like virtual backgrounds.
- blntechie 7y ago
  I’m still not convinced these incremental improvements make it a $40 billion company.
  - neuronic 7y ago
    Maybe ask Uber regarding senseless valuation, they oughta know about it. Also gallery view + image/whatever recognition = ad tech heaven.
- josteink 7y ago
  > Zoom realized that the install process was a significant barrier and did more than anyone else to lower that barrier Yes. By installing a local web server on every users PC, which was prone to remote execution exploits. They really don’t give a shit about security and actively try to subvert every security measure put in place by browser and OS-vendors. Why anyone would trust them with anything is beyond me.
- bartread 7y ago
  > 2. Related to the above, I have rarely, if ever, had a problem with Zoom quality. Massive factor here. You can use it and it mostly works extremely well. Much better than almost anything else, including the previously beloved Google Hangouts. In fairness to Microsoft, Teams is probably up there for quality nowadays too, but does lack a good gallery feature. Compare this with WebEx. I can only assume Cisco are gradually winding it down to EOL because I haven't been on a WebEx call that was anything other than an absolute shitshow since around 2014. Even before this it was really just the best of the worst. > 3. The onboarding for new users (basically just share a link) is dead simple. Zoom realized that the install process was a significant barrier and did more than anyone else to lower that barrier (of course, with lots of security/privacy issues to boot, but your average Joe isn't aware of those). Again, agree. Zoom "just works"(TM) for most people, most of the time. And for most people, most of the time, that outweighs any security concerns. It frustrates me that a certain segment of IT security professionals do not understand this. If you're one of these people, you need to realise that security is necessary but not sufficient. Security is a minimum requirement, but it is not even close to the bare minimum. Your product actually needs to be good within the context of what users are trying to achieve with it. It needs to do exactly what it's supposed to without drama and fuss. The product is the means, not the end and so, by implication, is the security product. Human nature is generally to choose things that reduce friction over those that add it, so find a way to build a product that is both secure and gets out of the way.
godelski 7y ago
I've been using it for a few months and the group I work with has been using it much longer. The reason is because: It is easy It just works It works cross platform (why the hell is this such an issue!) Quality is good You can record meetings
- aledthemathguy 7y ago
  My professor uses the whiteboard when giving lectures. Useful as well. Also, he shares his screen and just shows us his pdf files :) The Uni tried a different software before Zoom (forgot the name but it started with a K, from a company I never heard of before). And it was VERY GOOD but the video was choppy. Zoom isn't 10x better, it's just enough though.
blondin 7y ago
same. known zoom for a while... the "it just works" and "it has better quality" comments are very surprising to me and got me skeptical. are skype, slack, gotomeeting, hangouts, meet, webex, &c. all really crashing on people now? in a huge conspiracy? things i thought could be the real reason: novelty (for some/most people), popularity (someone online famous/influencer mentioned it), shadow marketing, luck. but wikipedia told me is actually going on: schools have decided that zoom will be the de-facto remote schooling platform. a bunch of young people appropriated the platform it seems. hope that helps. the superiority talk is just that. but now they are in a good position to become better than any other video conferencing software.
- markmark 7y ago
  I've been working at remote-first companies for about the last four years, my current and previous company independently tested a bunch of video conferencing apps and both settled on zoom. It just works better than the alternatives. Yes better than skype, slack, gotomeeting, hangouts, meet and webex (and teams, since that's the other big one). Sometimes it's call quality, sometimes it's stability, sometimes it's usability, sometimes it's features.
  - blondin 7y ago
    good for you but i respectfully disagree. i have also used many video conferencing software, including zoom for many years.
    - Larrikin 7y ago
      So zoom sucks and you've tested the alternatives but don't offer one?
- lmm 7y ago
  > are skype, slack, gotomeeting, hangouts, meet, webex, &c. all really crashing on people now? in a huge conspiracy? It's astonishing how so much low-quality software gets distributed, but: yes. Hangouts and Slack are a pain to get everyone logged in / invited to. Everything else on your list just breaks a lot. > but wikipedia told me is actually going on: schools have decided that zoom will be the de-facto remote schooling platform. a bunch of young people appropriated the platform it seems. That's a non-explanation. Zoom is popular with young people, sure. Why? The same reason it's popular with everyone else, because it works better.
randycupertino 7y ago
> What does Zoom offer that the other three doesn't? We switched to Zoom from Skype and Webex simply because it was cheaper.
jonathanstrange 7y ago
There is one huge difference, if I'm not mistaken. In our tests neither Skype nor Google Hangouts allowed the speaker of a talk to view the audience while screen sharing. It's annoying and feels very odd to give a two-hour lecture to your laptop with zero feedback from the audience. Maybe we did something wrong, though, and missed features in Hangouts and Skype. If that is the case I'd be very happy if someone could point it out to me. (Our whole university is using Google Hangouts right now, because our administration doesn't want to pay for additional Zoom subscriptions.)
- interestica 7y ago
  jitsi meet should allow it. free. open source. university could self host it too...
nemacol 7y ago
My short time working in higher education taught me that zoom is baked into some education software. If I recall it is part of the barns and noble cloud education suite. With the lock down, more online classes, more people seeing the Zoom logo?

malandrew 7y ago

It just works. Never used Jitsi, but the experience is far superior to Skype and Webex.

pmoriarty 7y ago
Could you elaborate on this? In what way is it superior?
- Linkd 7y ago
  From experience with many options, and having used zoom for over a year now: Video quality is better, audio quality is better, video and audio are streamed separately and during low bandwidth situations audio takes priority over video (video starts lagging but audio remains as perfect as possible), seamless to join meetings even when youre not a 'user' of their ecosystem, and has neat UX like informing you that your microphone is soft-muted when it notices you speaking, etc etc.
  - nutshell89 7y ago
    Whenever I've used Zoom from my home connection during the last few weeks, I've experienced laggy, blocky video, occasional audio dropouts (with frequent alert messages within the app to restart the Zoom client's audio), disturbingly high CPU usage, and meetings which take minutes for everyone to join. Honestly in my experience, there's no real benefit when compared with Skype, Hangouts, or Discord except for the frequently mentioned large 50 person+ video streaming.
distances 7y ago
My attempts at Zoom meetings were met with distorted audio, and the organizer quickly changed to Jitsi in both cases. It worked much better for whatever reason.

gnulinux 7y ago

My therapist tried a whole bunch of different services with different clients. We first tried doxy.me which is a HIPAA approved tele-medical service. But the quality was HORRIBLE, it was unusable, so she asked me if I would be ok using Skype (since Skype is not encrypted) I said ok (since I need the session more than it being secure). It was fine. Then we tried Zoom next time around. I thought Zoom was better in terms of quality and "just works out of the box". Just a datapoint. Getting video streaming correct is actually pretty hard, it's part of what I'm working on for my day job, and it's a very challenging problem.

jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
Why is it hard? Video streaming has been a thing for a couple decades. I am genuinely curious.
- TwoBit 7y ago
  The companies selling video streaming and conferencing have other issues, such as service costs. And they typically don't retain very good engineering teams.
- jonex 7y ago
  It's hard because it's dependant of other systems that are often not fully functional. The things that needs to work for a video call is: The network must be reasonably reliable and not overloaded. The camera must be configured and not privacy blocked. The correct recording device must be used, it must be recording (opportunity for both user error and OS issues here). If hardware codes are used (a requirement on lower end devices) it must support low enough bitrates, must have the right options. Typically all these things are slightly different between different devices and operating systems. It's typically easy to build a proof of concept with great quality and reliable connections between two given devices over a given network. It's super hard to make a product that is reliable enough that millions of users only rarely run into issues.
- michaelt 7y ago
  When you stream a Youtube or Netflix video, you can download several seconds ahead over boring old HTTP. It's a one-to-one link, you don't have to upload anything, and you don't need access the user's camera or microphone. To be competitive in videoconferencing these days, you need: * Low latency, so people don't talk over each other * Video and audio compression that doesn't get confused by dropped packets. * Setup so easy first-time users won't be late to their video job interview. * Group calls for 10+ people * HD quality * Adaptive bitrates, for users on different speed links * Skip-free audio even if a user's link goes from uncongested to heavily congested. * Reliable support for every webcam and USB headset on the market, and hot-plugging them during the call, and changing OS permissions during the call. * Reliable support for unreliable bluetooth headsets and unreliable bluetooth dongles. * Echo cancellation that works with every device and room configuration going. Including devices that have their own built-in echo cancellation. * Audio that's clear even in the presence of background noise, and different people at different distances from the microphone. * Users behind every type of misconfigured firewall you can imagine. * Roaming between different Wifi access points, and between wifi and cell data while on a call (including links with no connectivity sometimes) * Never (or almost never) forcing a user to update their software at the moment they're trying to join an important meeting or job interview. * Update support (or long-term compatibility) for users who don't have administrator rights. * Graceful recovery if the user sleeps then resumes their device. * Screen sharing that retains good readability, even if a user has unwisely made the text on their presentation a bit small. * Screen sharing of Youtube videos without making them blurry or choppy, even if they're embedded in presentations. * CPU and battery efficiency. * Free of charge * All the above on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux and WebRTC.

golergka 7y ago

It haven't spent 10 years being slowly killed by Microsoft's worst product practices.

api 7y ago

It works, the quality is decent, and it doesn't max out 4-8 cores for a simple video call. The others don't work, are Microsoft UI dumpster fires (Skype), or consume vast amounts of CPU (anything WebRTC for some reason).

fyfy18 7y ago
On Linux (Skylake u-i7) Zoom maxes out my CPU :-(
- api 7y ago
  I meant it works relatively speaking. To be fair Google meet is usable too, but Zoom does better with huge numbers of participants. There seems to be a law that states that all messenger apps must be bloated slow junk and must accumulate cruft over time until they turn to mush.
- aledthemathguy 7y ago
  I came to the conclusion that if you want to run Linux, you must run Windows as well :) Sucks, but true.
  - silon42 7y ago
    Hopefully in a VM (sandbox), like all proprietary software should be ran.
- slavik81 7y ago
  I found that making the window smaller greatly reduced CPU usage. It seems to be doing the video decoding on the CPU.
true_religion 7y ago
What would Zoom use when it’s working in the browser if it’s not WebRTC?
- jonex 7y ago

starpilot 7y ago

Cisco certainly isn't using Zoom. My old school corp employer is on Webex, along with using SAP and other bullshit represented by good sales teams.

organsnyder 7y ago
Cisco owns Webex, so of course they'd use it. I've suffered through Webex with a previous employer and a current client, and it's just horrible. GoToMeeting is much better, and Zoom is better yet.
sah2ed 7y ago
The founder of Zoom (Eric Yuan) used to be a respected leader at Cisco but he eventually quit to focus full-time on Zoom. Cisco didn’t fully understand the opportunity he saw to reduce the amount of friction needed to use most video conferencing (VC) software tools, including the tools by Cisco, which is understandable since Cisco was afraid they might cannibalize sales in their VC hardware business.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

1. The gallery view (aka 'Brady Bunch' view) works significantly better than any other system, with a large number of users. Especially now where everyone is working remotely and you have large group chats IMO this is the biggest factor. 2. Related to the above, I have rarely, if ever, had a problem with Zoom quality. 3. The onboarding for new users (basically just share a link) is dead simple. Zoom realized that the install process was a significant barrier and did more than anyone else to lower that barrier (of course, with lots of security/privacy issues to boot, but your average Joe isn't aware of those). 4. A smaller factor but perhaps a bigger one for people using Zoom for personal reasons (e.g. teenagers and college kids) are the 'fun' features like virtual backgrounds.

blntechie 7y ago
I’m still not convinced these incremental improvements make it a $40 billion company.
- neuronic 7y ago
  Maybe ask Uber regarding senseless valuation, they oughta know about it. Also gallery view + image/whatever recognition = ad tech heaven.
josteink 7y ago
> Zoom realized that the install process was a significant barrier and did more than anyone else to lower that barrier Yes. By installing a local web server on every users PC, which was prone to remote execution exploits. They really don’t give a shit about security and actively try to subvert every security measure put in place by browser and OS-vendors. Why anyone would trust them with anything is beyond me.
bartread 7y ago
> 2. Related to the above, I have rarely, if ever, had a problem with Zoom quality. Massive factor here. You can use it and it mostly works extremely well. Much better than almost anything else, including the previously beloved Google Hangouts. In fairness to Microsoft, Teams is probably up there for quality nowadays too, but does lack a good gallery feature. Compare this with WebEx. I can only assume Cisco are gradually winding it down to EOL because I haven't been on a WebEx call that was anything other than an absolute shitshow since around 2014. Even before this it was really just the best of the worst. > 3. The onboarding for new users (basically just share a link) is dead simple. Zoom realized that the install process was a significant barrier and did more than anyone else to lower that barrier (of course, with lots of security/privacy issues to boot, but your average Joe isn't aware of those). Again, agree. Zoom "just works"(TM) for most people, most of the time. And for most people, most of the time, that outweighs any security concerns. It frustrates me that a certain segment of IT security professionals do not understand this. If you're one of these people, you need to realise that security is necessary but not sufficient. Security is a minimum requirement, but it is not even close to the bare minimum. Your product actually needs to be good within the context of what users are trying to achieve with it. It needs to do exactly what it's supposed to without drama and fuss. The product is the means, not the end and so, by implication, is the security product. Human nature is generally to choose things that reduce friction over those that add it, so find a way to build a product that is both secure and gets out of the way.

godelski 7y ago

I've been using it for a few months and the group I work with has been using it much longer. The reason is because: It is easy It just works It works cross platform (why the hell is this such an issue!) Quality is good You can record meetings

aledthemathguy 7y ago
My professor uses the whiteboard when giving lectures. Useful as well. Also, he shares his screen and just shows us his pdf files :) The Uni tried a different software before Zoom (forgot the name but it started with a K, from a company I never heard of before). And it was VERY GOOD but the video was choppy. Zoom isn't 10x better, it's just enough though.

blondin 7y ago

same. known zoom for a while... the "it just works" and "it has better quality" comments are very surprising to me and got me skeptical. are skype, slack, gotomeeting, hangouts, meet, webex, &c. all really crashing on people now? in a huge conspiracy? things i thought could be the real reason: novelty (for some/most people), popularity (someone online famous/influencer mentioned it), shadow marketing, luck. but wikipedia told me is actually going on: schools have decided that zoom will be the de-facto remote schooling platform. a bunch of young people appropriated the platform it seems. hope that helps. the superiority talk is just that. but now they are in a good position to become better than any other video conferencing software.

markmark 7y ago
I've been working at remote-first companies for about the last four years, my current and previous company independently tested a bunch of video conferencing apps and both settled on zoom. It just works better than the alternatives. Yes better than skype, slack, gotomeeting, hangouts, meet and webex (and teams, since that's the other big one). Sometimes it's call quality, sometimes it's stability, sometimes it's usability, sometimes it's features.
- blondin 7y ago
  good for you but i respectfully disagree. i have also used many video conferencing software, including zoom for many years.
  - Larrikin 7y ago
    So zoom sucks and you've tested the alternatives but don't offer one?
lmm 7y ago
> are skype, slack, gotomeeting, hangouts, meet, webex, &c. all really crashing on people now? in a huge conspiracy? It's astonishing how so much low-quality software gets distributed, but: yes. Hangouts and Slack are a pain to get everyone logged in / invited to. Everything else on your list just breaks a lot. > but wikipedia told me is actually going on: schools have decided that zoom will be the de-facto remote schooling platform. a bunch of young people appropriated the platform it seems. That's a non-explanation. Zoom is popular with young people, sure. Why? The same reason it's popular with everyone else, because it works better.

randycupertino 7y ago

> What does Zoom offer that the other three doesn't? We switched to Zoom from Skype and Webex simply because it was cheaper.

jonathanstrange 7y ago

There is one huge difference, if I'm not mistaken. In our tests neither Skype nor Google Hangouts allowed the speaker of a talk to view the audience while screen sharing. It's annoying and feels very odd to give a two-hour lecture to your laptop with zero feedback from the audience. Maybe we did something wrong, though, and missed features in Hangouts and Skype. If that is the case I'd be very happy if someone could point it out to me. (Our whole university is using Google Hangouts right now, because our administration doesn't want to pay for additional Zoom subscriptions.)

interestica 7y ago
jitsi meet should allow it. free. open source. university could self host it too...

nemacol 7y ago

My short time working in higher education taught me that zoom is baked into some education software. If I recall it is part of the barns and noble cloud education suite. With the lock down, more online classes, more people seeing the Zoom logo?