Team Partners Telecommunications

Zoom'ing

Posted on Nov 22, 2021

Hands up all those who remember Fat Larry’s band! Some of us even went to see them in concert, which, as it happened, was rather disappointing. They took the whole meaning of the phrase “one hit wonder” to a new level. Theirs was the only concert, sorry “gig” we’ve been to where, having run right through their entire repertoire in about half an hour, they just looked at each other and ran through it all again.

It was 1982, funk was important and the title of their one hit was “Zoom”. If only they’d known. Roll the clock all the way forward to 2011 and the Zoom most of know and use was born, not exactly hot on the heels of the grand-daddy of internet communication, Skype. Skype came to us courtesy of a couple of Danes in 2003, and had 50 million registered users by 2005. Impressive numbers, except they were up to 600 million just five years later. What happened?

Microsoft.

They bought it in 2011, the same year Zoom was born. They didn’t need it, they already had internet communications in Window’s Live Messenger, and by that time Skype, although remaining the definitive verb for internet communications, “I’ll skype you later…”, had lost its marketing way and its market generally. Microsoft bought a name and then lost it. In trying to redesign Skype to be funky, whoops, there’s that word again, it lost sight of Skype’s redeeming feature, the quality of their video conferencing.  The new Skype App saw it receive terrible reviews for functionality. Microsoft decided to invest its interest in Teams. Skype was fully retired in July of this year. Who noticed?

If ever a company benefitted from Covid and lockdown it has been Zoom. Most of us cannot remember it being even mentioned pre-lockdown, yet here we are and the defining verb is now very definitely “Zoom”. Being free to download helped, of course, enjoying ever bettering quality helped too, but most of all it’s the simplicity and the fact that even the most fervent of technophobes can make it work that has made it the success it is.

Except, that is, when your own internet lets the whole show down, and that’s really the point of this blog. Everyone knows how efficient Zoom is, we can’t blame it for any failings in our own broadband connection, so it’s always going to be our own reputation that suffers if our conversations or conference calls fail. We would suggest that the time when we could blame working from home (WFH), for internet failures is now past, and any organisation that cannot support full real time connectivity is going to be considered inefficient, if not amateur, and, of course, there’s no need for it to happen. Companies such as ours exist to ensure seamless internet communications that earn the respect of your clients. Give us a call.