Zoom launches Events platform for virtual experiences

Buoyed by its continued mass adoption and further elevated by the soaring revenues it has generated from this demand, Zoom Video Communications has moved into the realm of virtual events.

After companies around the world pivoted to remote working during the pandemic, with many now transitioning to a hybrid model of work, the company has enjoyed a surfeit of revenue which it has ploughed into developing products to support the new normal of work.

In April 2021, just after it announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering of more than five million shares of stock and revealed that it had racked up a million seat sales of the phone version of its booming video conferencing solution, Zoom launched a $100m venture fund. The new Zoom Events product is a further sign that the company is not resting on its now very lucrative laurels.

Revealing the rationale for the launch, the company referred to its recent How virtual do we want our future to be? study, which surveyed people worldwide on the role of video communications in their daily lives as we look beyond the pandemic. It found that 79% of UK respondents agreed that everything would continue to have a virtual element after the pandemic, and half were planning to enjoy events both in-person and virtually, reinforcing the need for an all-in-one solution that will create seamless hybrid/virtual event experiences.

Due to become available this summer, Zoom Events is described as an all-in-one platform with the power to produce interactive and “engaging” virtual experiences. The developers say it combines the reliability and scalability of Zoom Meetings, Chat and Video Webinars in one package for event organisers, with the ability to produce ticketed, live events for internal or external audiences of any size.

Benefits claimed for the product include the ability to build an event hub to easily manage and share events; customisable ticketing and registration; access and billing control from a single portal; bringing attendees together with integrated networking; and tracking event statistics. Events can be kept private or posted to our public directory for others to discover and the service can be used with an existing paid Zoom Meetings or Video Webinar licence.

Zoom Events is said to be appropriate for a variety of use cases – from enabling large businesses to manage and host internal events such as all-hands and sales summits and external events such as user conferences, to smaller businesses and entrepreneurs who have been using OnZoom to create, host and monetise events such as fitness and cooking classes, theatrical presentations, and so on. As part of the launch of Zoom Events, OnZoom, currently in Beta, will be rebranded and folded into Zoom Events, and can be either private or searched and explored publicly.

“It’s an exciting time to be at Zoom where the pace of innovation continues to accelerate,” said Oded Gal, chief product officer at Zoom. “We know that people are looking for flexibility in how they attend events in the future. The hybrid model is here to stay, and Zoom Events is a perfect solution for our customers who are looking to produce and host customer, company and public events with an easy yet powerful solution. This is another way we’re helping customers scale to meet consumer demands and the evolving virtual and hybrid landscape.”