Which is a long way of saying that Zoom is one the few companies that has been around long enough to deal with all the edge cases. Throw a few devs in a room for a bit and you'll get a perfectly usable video chat for 1-1 or a small group, but you won't get Zoom.
Re:Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act
by Wowfunhappy on Friday March 27, 2020 @02:55PM
(#22705679)
Wikipedia says Zoom was founded in 2011. Google Hangouts has been around for about the same amount of time, and Skype predates them by quite a bit.
I don't quite understand why Hangouts and Skype aren't more robust than they are. I'm sure this is indeed a hard problem, but the utility of getting it right is obvious, and these are massive companies.
Re:Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act
by OrangeMango on Friday March 27, 2020 @11:25AM
(#22703609)
I appreciate listing the areas in which Zoom beats competitors. It helps people understand where work should be done on alternatives.
My company has been remote-only for about 1.5 weeks now and we have 4 different conferencing systems that people are using. It's interesting that everyone has their preferences, but for small meetings nobody is using Zoom as far as I've seen.
Re:Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act
by floatingatoll on Friday March 27, 2020 @12:02PM
(#22704047)
Be aware that allowing everybody to continue following their preferences will result in the same proliferation that you see with text editors, email clients, and programming languages. Based on having only 4 different systems, I might predict that your company size is ~100-200 people (though that's a napkin estimate based on a single integer). There are at least 10 systems available, and certainly many more that are only accessible to technical people.
Re:Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act
by floatingatoll on Friday March 27, 2020 @11:58AM
(#22704003)
Try it at 600 people, with at least 50 unmuted. (Not a made up example. Zoom worked, last week, for us.)
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> Try it when you want breakout groups and to determine who is in which group, and after a set time for the groups to return to the main space.
> or giving a ... seminar.
Zoom is good for large, hugely interactive, video conferencing and meeting.
I am unaffiliated, just a user who has used most of what is out there.
Try it when you want to control who is speaking and when.
Try it when you want to co-ordinate hundreds of participants and still want to track who has a question so you can hand the virtual mic / airtime to them.
Try it when you want breakout groups and to determine who is in which group, and after a set time for the groups to return to the main space.
What is good enough for 2 people facing each other, and appears to work perfectly well for a group of 5 or 6... doesn't quite scale to a company all-hands, or giving a lecture or seminar.
Tools fit a scale, and Zoom is excessive for the small and simple use-case but excels at the large and complex.