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I would say the most important part, and where every company has shot themselves in the foot is the need for an account. With Zoom you can join meetings with ju

I would say the most important part, and where every company has shot themselves in the foot is the need for an account. With Zoom you can join meetings with just a link/code, and while it may seem trivial to us thats a huge plus for nontechnical people. That and the fact Zoom had seamless integration with large meetings with relatively little-to-no performance/quality costs is a huge benefit. The luck of timing & advertising is what pulled it all together.

DevKoala 6y ago
I think this makes sense, and it is indeed a major contributing factor to the UX. The hunger for data from all the other players essentially hampered the product adoption.
cecilpl2 6y ago
This is exactly it. In March, when everyone suddenly wanted to do group video calls with their friends and family, most of whom are nontechnical, we settled quickly on Zoom for ease-of-access. Of all the options, it was the easiest one for me to get my parents into a family call. You message someone a link, and they click the big buttons until they are in a call. No account, no confusion. We had 100% success rate on getting people in. Also, it's asynchronous unlike something like FB messenger or Facetime (ie it doesn't push you the meeting, you can pull it at your convenience).
- foobarian 6y ago
  This was another annoying feature of Meet. The meeting organizer is special and needs to be connected to let people in.
foobarian 6y ago
So much this. My kid's school went with Google Meet for the online class chats, and gave us meeting codes. So far so good. I get the app, wants a Google account. I would have stopped right there if it was an option. Then, constant problems and apologies from presenter, just like in the bad old days of laptop presentations and projector resolutions. App is not the best either - rookie UI mistakes like the meeting code text box obscured by a CTA. A UX so bad that it boggles the mind. The school district ended up distributing their own Gmail credentials to use for the meetings, too, which was behind a hard-to-find edu-website login. That's a lot of friction that Zoom solves.
sien 6y ago
It's also a huge plus for places that lock down their computers so you can't install software on them. I used to use WebEx on a personal laptop for work conversations with other organisations because my work machine wouldn't allow it to run properly.

DevKoala 6y ago

I think this makes sense, and it is indeed a major contributing factor to the UX. The hunger for data from all the other players essentially hampered the product adoption.

cecilpl2 6y ago

This is exactly it. In March, when everyone suddenly wanted to do group video calls with their friends and family, most of whom are nontechnical, we settled quickly on Zoom for ease-of-access. Of all the options, it was the easiest one for me to get my parents into a family call. You message someone a link, and they click the big buttons until they are in a call. No account, no confusion. We had 100% success rate on getting people in. Also, it's asynchronous unlike something like FB messenger or Facetime (ie it doesn't push you the meeting, you can pull it at your convenience).

foobarian 6y ago
This was another annoying feature of Meet. The meeting organizer is special and needs to be connected to let people in.

foobarian 6y ago

So much this. My kid's school went with Google Meet for the online class chats, and gave us meeting codes. So far so good. I get the app, wants a Google account. I would have stopped right there if it was an option. Then, constant problems and apologies from presenter, just like in the bad old days of laptop presentations and projector resolutions. App is not the best either - rookie UI mistakes like the meeting code text box obscured by a CTA. A UX so bad that it boggles the mind. The school district ended up distributing their own Gmail credentials to use for the meetings, too, which was behind a hard-to-find edu-website login. That's a lot of friction that Zoom solves.

sien 6y ago

It's also a huge plus for places that lock down their computers so you can't install software on them. I used to use WebEx on a personal laptop for work conversations with other organisations because my work machine wouldn't allow it to run properly.