COVID-19; the pandemic that caused countries to shut off traveling and keep people at home, away from family, friends, and colleagues. During this time where people were stuck at home to avoid human contact, but the world had to keep moving forward. To keep up with school, work, and family and friends videoconferencing became a necessity. This is where Zoom, a video communication company, came into play and thrived. It has an easy to use interface with the ability to support up to 100 participants at a time. Millions of people converged to this videoconferencing service to see colleagues, friends, and family while at home.

How much has Zoom grown?

In 9 years Zoom grew to have 10 million users at the start of 2020. Since COVID-19 caused, people were forced to stay at home. The user count grew to 300 million. Zoom recorded revenue for its fiscal first quarter at $328 million which more than doubled their revenue from last year. That’s a profit of $27 million; up from $198,000 last year. The company is forecasted to make more than $500 million for the current quarter which ends in July. Its projected fiscal year revenue is about $1.8 billion, nearly triple its revenue from last year. Zoom has become a tool for online schooling, work meetings, and ‘cocktail hour’ meetings.

COVID-19 caused schools around the world to shutdown and shift into online schooling. Worldwide, more than 100,000 schools are using Zoom for online classes. Fortunately, switching to online classes and using Zoom for class meetings allowed students to finish the semester. Although not the same as in person classes, this tool still allowed teachers and students to interact with each other. Zoom has also proven to be a handy tool for businesses.

Non-essential businesses were forced to make employees work from home during the pandemic. The ability to still hold meetings and briefings with Zoom was essential. It allowed businesses and coworkers to be up to date on the happenings in a company and make sure employees were staying on track and getting work done. Zoom also helped coworkers, who were used to seeing each other daily, keep in touch. While Zoom has been used for professional reasons, a big part to its growth during the pandemic is because of personal reasons too.

Not being able to be around friends and family can take its toll. Luckily, Zoom can be used to communicate and see each other. ‘Cocktail hour’ meetings have become quite popular over the last few months. One family even set up a meeting to take a cooking class from a grandmother. A recipe was sent to everyone involved. They got the proper ingredients and the grandmother ran through the recipe step-by-step as everyone cooked alongside her. Seeing family and friends through this pandemic via Zoom has helped people keep their morale high.

Whether it’s to be used for professional reasons like; meetings and briefings, to continue classes through online schooling, or to stay in touch and see the faces of family and friends, Zoom became an essential part of over 300 million peoples’ lives during the pandemic.