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Regular folks don't care. Zoom is currently, waaay better than anything else, although may be not for long. But venture capitalists and investors have their ego

Regular folks don't care. Zoom is currently, waaay better than anything else, although may be not for long. But venture capitalists and investors have their egos. It's funny to have the same fight (DAU and how engaged users really are) between Slack and MS Teams.

0898 6y ago
Personally, I find Zoom's breakout rooms a complete game-changer when it comes to hosting online events. If you use them properly they can reduce or eliminate a lot of the energy-sapping effects of online meetings.
- fock 6y ago
  discord has them too and does them even better. + it runs in a browser...
sdoering 6y ago
I agree and don't understand the downvotes. I have in the last weeks probably seen most of the tools out there and used a lot. As said in another comment my SO has to use multiple tools. So Zoom won from a usability and feature perspective for non technical users.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I’ve written video software. Zoom’s client blows away anything that I’ve seen from anyone else -by a significant margin. When you can have 30 active video thumbnails on a single screen, with very little latency, on a humbly-specced machine, and the fan doesn’t even kick in, you have some impressive work.
- icebraining 6y ago
  I have wondered if they're combining them on the server-side and just pushing a single stream to the client. Would that be detectable?
  - thecybernerd 6y ago
    That's exactly what they're doing. They are using an MCU architecture where as most others use an SFU architecture. I believe some solutions use a hybrid of both.
  - robszumski 6y ago
    I use BlueJeans at work is this is what they do. I'm not so sure that Zoom is doing this. The side effects are that it heavily restricts what kinds of layouts you can use, and you will frequently see everyone's face go pixelated in a way thats super clear it's a single stream. Stuff like BlueJeans will only show you at most 9 users in a grid, even if more than 9 have video on. They will never have rows of 3 and then a row of two users. I don't see this behavior with Zoom but I only use it about once a month for random meetings.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    I agree with robszumski. I don't think that it's a single stream being configured server-side. They may have some good video-compression stuff going on. I haven't bothered to set up a network sniffer to see what is going on, but I suspect that it's a PtP vid connection. This is because I will occasionally see only one thumbnail bork, and also the thumbnails are constantly switching places to match my screen (which I find maddening). I think that it was Skype that had the "lowest common denominator" problem, where just one bad connection would bork the whole session. It seems that in Zoom, a single (or multiple) bad connection won't mess up the whole call. Also, the quality doesn't seem to degrade as more people are added.
  - shim__ 6y ago
    I guess it's the client who's sending the video that's adapting.
- JackPoach 6y ago
  That's what I am saying too. Zoom is ahead of everyone. Better yet, people actually SEE why and how it's better than Skype, for instance. That's why I am saying that actual Zoom users don't care if it's being used by 30 million users or 300 million users. It's a great service. BUT the story is different for investors and VC. They don't care about if Zoom is good or bad, they care if Zoom is taking market share or losing market share.
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
regular folks don't care because those who are supposed to be experts and the only ones who are skilled to peel back the layers of BS instead make hand-wavy assessments like this.

0898 6y ago

Personally, I find Zoom's breakout rooms a complete game-changer when it comes to hosting online events. If you use them properly they can reduce or eliminate a lot of the energy-sapping effects of online meetings.

fock 6y ago
discord has them too and does them even better. + it runs in a browser...

sdoering 6y ago

I agree and don't understand the downvotes. I have in the last weeks probably seen most of the tools out there and used a lot. As said in another comment my SO has to use multiple tools. So Zoom won from a usability and feature perspective for non technical users.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

I’ve written video software. Zoom’s client blows away anything that I’ve seen from anyone else -by a significant margin. When you can have 30 active video thumbnails on a single screen, with very little latency, on a humbly-specced machine, and the fan doesn’t even kick in, you have some impressive work.

icebraining 6y ago
I have wondered if they're combining them on the server-side and just pushing a single stream to the client. Would that be detectable?
- thecybernerd 6y ago
  That's exactly what they're doing. They are using an MCU architecture where as most others use an SFU architecture. I believe some solutions use a hybrid of both.
- robszumski 6y ago
  I use BlueJeans at work is this is what they do. I'm not so sure that Zoom is doing this. The side effects are that it heavily restricts what kinds of layouts you can use, and you will frequently see everyone's face go pixelated in a way thats super clear it's a single stream. Stuff like BlueJeans will only show you at most 9 users in a grid, even if more than 9 have video on. They will never have rows of 3 and then a row of two users. I don't see this behavior with Zoom but I only use it about once a month for random meetings.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I agree with robszumski. I don't think that it's a single stream being configured server-side. They may have some good video-compression stuff going on. I haven't bothered to set up a network sniffer to see what is going on, but I suspect that it's a PtP vid connection. This is because I will occasionally see only one thumbnail bork, and also the thumbnails are constantly switching places to match my screen (which I find maddening). I think that it was Skype that had the "lowest common denominator" problem, where just one bad connection would bork the whole session. It seems that in Zoom, a single (or multiple) bad connection won't mess up the whole call. Also, the quality doesn't seem to degrade as more people are added.
- shim__ 6y ago
  I guess it's the client who's sending the video that's adapting.
JackPoach 6y ago
That's what I am saying too. Zoom is ahead of everyone. Better yet, people actually SEE why and how it's better than Skype, for instance. That's why I am saying that actual Zoom users don't care if it's being used by 30 million users or 300 million users. It's a great service. BUT the story is different for investors and VC. They don't care about if Zoom is good or bad, they care if Zoom is taking market share or losing market share.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

regular folks don't care because those who are supposed to be experts and the only ones who are skilled to peel back the layers of BS instead make hand-wavy assessments like this.