At the end of December, Zoom had 10 million daily users; by March it was 300 million. How I bet you wish you had shares in the company!
Video calls have become part of daily life since the pandemic hit, helping the locked-down, especially elderly and disabled people, keep in touch. Not just that it has become the tool of choice for Business users everywhere. From Networking meetings, through work pitches to client catch-ups it seems that everyone now immediately heads for Zoom rather than picking up the phone. However the Zoom Boom has had its critics too.
According to Ammar Kalia features Editor at the Guardian, ‘For many of us, Zoom, and apps like it, are a necessary frustration – the technical glitches, the pixellated faces, the exhaustingly long meetings with colleagues with their bookcases in the background – are the price we pay for preventing the spread of a pandemic. But for others, many of them elderly or disabled, the Zoom boom has helped them become more sociable than before.’
Psychologist Dr Doreen Dodgen-Magee sees video-calling as being an essential but contentious part of our lives. “As social animals, we fail to thrive when we can’t have meaningful connections with others, so video-calling is really important at the moment for helping us feel part of a community,” she says. But it is not without its flaws. “Speaking over video is such a static way of connecting with people. We’re used to a full sensory experience, which is lost when we’re limited to a small square of someone’s face with audio delays. Plus, we’re always seeing our own faces, so there’s a constant sense of internal judgment on how we look and the distraction of where we should even be looking.”
I have moved all my training onto Zoom and likewise my Networking – this has minimised travel and maximised my time but I do miss social contact and video will never replace that.
So what are your thoughts? Has the Video calling boom changed the way that you are working? Will you continue to work over video after the pandemic? I’d be interested in your views. Drop your views below or message me for a chat – Over Zoom if you like!