With all of us being stuck inside, it has been rather hard to really communicate with everyone. Sure, we can call and text, but what there are many situations when we cannot call a person, such as a coworker that you want to check on or a classmate or teacher that might be able to help with you a homework problem.

That is where video conferences come in. Now, this is no new thing to the public. Ever since 2003, when Skype can out we have been video chatting, it has been available. Not only Skype ,but many other places like Facebook and Snapchat hopped onto it. However, since everyone is stuck inside now, this market has skyrocketed. One of the main examples that has really become popular is Zoom.  

Zoom was founded back in 2011 and was mostly used by companies to interact with other people in other countries. Companies like Uber, 21st Century Fox, Slack and Pandora used it to communicate with each other to keep their businesses moving.  Then out of nowhere, boom. Zoom started to rise slowly over the month of February and then really start to peak in March, with the stocks at an all time high. At this point, it seemed that Zoom was unstoppable, making more and more money by the day until some other companies started to hop on video calls and tried to tumble down Zoom and look into its many flaws.

To start off,  Zoom is not really free because while you have all the features when you go one it, you can actually only be on a call for 40 minutes, which may seem like a lot of time, but it is not helpful to be just booted off an important call just because of a time limit. Not only that, but it has been said that Zoom sells your data to Facebook, which Zoom denied ever happened. In addition, the security is very easy to break through, which makes it easier for hackers to take over your webcam and microphone.

With all of these problems, many other companies have seen this as a great time to strike down the company by making their own video call applications. Some of these companies are Google, with Google Hangout, Facebook by adding it on to Whatsapp, Houseparty which allows people to play games with their friends. Lastly, the juggernaut of this the video call market, Discord, which is fleshed out, can really be used in any way with many channels for texting, voice chat, video chat and many other things.  With all of these new and old companies that have had more experience it is hard for Zoom to keep up. Because of this, Zoom has dived down in stock and popularity.

With all of the competition for Zoom, it is unknown where it will go next with its plans. Even with the big hit it has taken, Zoom is still very much thriving in the virtual classroom area.  However, it seems that these other companies are still trying to get Zoom’s market by trying to pander to more educational means. It is unsure right now where Zoom is going with all of these threats and problems slowly crawling to them and hurting them. Is Zoom doomed to fall back into the depth of obscurity or do they have some more moves up their sleeves to keep up with the big boys. Either way it goes, Zoom has one thing to hold onto, which is that it has been the backbone for some great memes.