COVID-19 has allowed for online platforms to soar. graphic courtesy of Rev.com, Austin Canary
COVID-19 has increased the use of Zoom, Google Meets, and Schoology.
The pandemic of 2020 has brought many upsets, but with the use of technology, people have been able to stay connected. Online platforms like Zoom have allowed people around the world to continue to communicate even when they are stuck at home. The increase in the use of Zoom during the Coronavirus has increased the company’s net worth and stock value in the market. Platforms such as Google Meet and Schoology have allowed students to continue learning virtually. These companies have helped people during isolation to maintain their relationships and education. The high amount of usage allowed the companies to succeed in the market.
Zoom Video Communications, Incorporated, is an American communications and technology company. Zoom is headquartered in San Jose, California. The company provides online chat services, teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and social relations. The founder, Eric Yuan, created Zoom because of his hatred of traveling. Yuan now has a net worth of $19.5 billion and his company, Zoom, is now worth $35 billion. In previous months, the company has grown by $328.2 million in profit. There has also been a significant rise in sales of 169%. In about three months, Zoom made a profit of $27 million. From the start of the pandemic, there have been 180,000 new members using the platform for communication purposes. The online blog Wired explained, “Zoom was never designed to be a consumer-grade product… But it was designed to be so easy to use, and so good to be on from a user experience perspective.” The company continues to grow in sales, members, and net worth because of the increase of usage from COVID-19 which has brought a lot of success for Zoom.
Another platform that has been highly used and successful is Google Meet. As Business Insider says, “Google Meet, also known as Google Hangouts Meet, is built to let dozens of people join the same virtual meeting, and speak or share video with each other from anywhere with internet access.” In the first couple of months of the pandemic, the company grew by 30 times and started hosting 100 million participants a day. Google Meet continues to add three million users each day because of the easy access to the website. Before COVID-19, Google Meets were only regional calls, but the company has been able to become national to keep up with their competitors, like Zoom. Samantha Schaevitz, a Google responsibility engineer, was a big reason why Google was able to have huge success with their meets and chats. A team of Schaevitz and other engineers had to solve problems to make Google Meets fulfill the expectations of users. There were many struggles in expanding Google Meets and especially the fact that Schaevitz’s team had to make a 24-hour-platform successful while never meeting in person. Due to the hard work of employees at Google, Alphabet recorded the company had $41.2 billion in revenue and a net income of $8.3 billion in the first quarter of the year. The company continues to grow and develop new technology to connect people around the world.
Schoology is a social networking service and virtual learning environment for K-12 schools and higher education that allows users to manage, create, and share academic content. There has been a 400% increase in Schoology usage since March 2020. This is the largest peak for Schoology in over 10 years. PowerSchool, the owner of Schoology, currently has over 20,000,000 users in over 60,000 schools. Schoology was used before the pandemic, but has vastly increased and improved since then. The Schoology Conferences feature is used in remote learning and allows for students to attend classes online. An important feature of the conferences is the breakout rooms. The feature allows students to work in smaller groups to complete school work and projects very similarly to in-person school. Schoology continues to be used as an interactive platform for educational purposes and has made it easier for students, teachers, and schools during the coronavirus.
The various platforms have gone through struggles to make improvements for their customers to create a new form of communication during the time of the pandemic. The companies have been successful in completing their goals and satisfying users and their results are shown in the market. Each platform’s usage and net worth have significantly increased and continue to connect people around the world for all purposes.
