Zoom Eyes Ways to Earn From Its Pandemic-Fueled Mass Appeal
October 19 2020 - 03:28PM
Dow Jones News
By Aaron Tilley
Zoom Video Communications Inc. plans to capitalize more broadly
on its massive surge in popularity, but is still assessing how best
to target smaller consumers, Chief Operating Officer Aparna Bawa
said Monday.
"We still are watching and waiting to see what the economics
look like. We want to make sure that the customer base that we're
serving finds it helpful, it's priced at the right point, it's
beneficial to all," Ms. Bawa said at the WSJ Tech Live conference
on Monday.
Before the pandemic, Zoom was largely focused on servicing large
enterprise customers. Almost overnight, when the virus stuck
driving people to stay at, the app became a daily tool for
businesses of all sizes and individuals to make it through the
The company last week unveiled its OnZoom service to help such
people and businesses better charge for events, such as piano
lessons taking place on its platform. OnZoom is only available to
paying customers for now, not those using the free service, but
Zoom is looking for other ways to potentially get a cut of the
businesses transacted on its service.
"We're not quite sure how that's going to work," Ms. Bawa said,
with decisions likely next year.
During the pandemic, San Jose, Calif.-based Zoom use grew to
more than 300 million daily meeting participants from 10 million
late last year.
Catering to the millions of people who now use Zoom free to stay
in touch with work, family and friends has come with a cost, she
said, but it is one the company looks as an investment in growth.
"For us, it's a long game," Ms. Bawa says at the WSJ Tech Live
Conference. "The more and more we can build our user base and
establish trust with folks like you, the more sort of legs we have
as a company."
Even without getting the users of its free service to pay the
pandemic has supercharged Zoom's earnings as companies embraced the
service to connect with employees and clients during the
working-from-home era. In August, Zoom raised its full-year outlook
for the second time during the pandemic. The company's stock has
surged more than 700% this year.
The increased popular attention also highlighted shortcomings.
Zoom, early in the pandemic, struggled to deal with the explosion
of "Zoombombing" -- where people gain unauthorized access to a
meeting and share hate-speech or pornographic images. Zoom
responded by adjusting default settings for users, but Zoombombings
still happen.
Ms. Bawa said that one mistake the company made at the time
wasn't doing more to educate users on how to use the platform.
Zoom, she said, found that many teachers were adjusting some
settings to make it easier for students to join virtual classrooms,
but that also opened the door to outsiders. Since then the company
has put more emphasis on educating users about how to keep their
sessions secure.
Zoom's mass appeal also has caused rivals to increase their
focus on the videoconferencing market. Microsoft Corp. has upgraded
video features on its Teams workplace collaboration software suite
and Facebook Inc. also has launched a rival product.
"We thrive on competition," Ms. Bawa said. "We're not scared of
it. It actually drives us to want to do better."
Write to Aaron Tilley at aaron.tilley@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 19, 2020 16:13 ET (20:13 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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