Will Monday’s Outage Impact Zoom’s Status as the No. 1 Video Platform?

With millions of Americans now using Zoom on a daily basis to connect with friends, family, and co-workers, it’s no surprise that Monday’s service outage made headlines. 

But will the outage have a long-term impact on the pecking order of video-conferencing platforms? CivicScience surveyed more than 2,300 American adults (ages 18+) on Tuesday and Wednesday to find out.

Ongoing CivicScience surveying has found that roughly half of Americans now say they use video-conferencing platforms like Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, and others. Among those that use video apps, about 1 in 6 (16%) say they’re less likely to use Zoom after Monday’s outage.

Those who say they follow trends in electronics and technology “very closely” were about twice as likely as others to say they would be less likely to use Zoom because of the outage.

Men were also more likely than women to say they might leave Zoom due to the outage.

But it appears that, although there may be some defectors, most Zoom users will stay loyal to their platform. In fact, in a separate survey of more than 2,300 American adults also conducted after Monday’s outage, CivicScience found that more than 1 in 3 video-conferencing users say they trust Zoom the most of all available platforms — the highest rate of any individual platform by far. That’s head-and-shoulders above FaceTime, the next most trusted app.

It’s Zoom’s World, and We’re Just Streaming In It

Zoom’s preeminence in the video-conferencing sphere is interesting because it’s a relatively small company when compared with the other major names on the list (Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.). Many consumers who are otherwise predisposed to like these larger brands are eschewing them in favor of Zoom.

For example, fewer than 1 in 6 daily Facebook users who use video-conferencing say the Facebook Messenger video-chat service is their go-to app. Zoom has it beat by nearly 3-to-1 among daily FB users.

And about 40% of all U.S. adults who use email at all say they primarily use Google’s Gmail. Unfortunately for Google, only about 8% of Gmail users trust Google Meet the most for video-chatting, while nearly 4 in 10 say they prefer Zoom. Google Meet also came in well behind Apple’s FaceTime and Microsoft Teams among Gmail users.

Clearly, Zoom is at the top of the heap when it comes to video-conferencing apps. Monday’s service outage may end up alienating some Zoom users — tech-savvy men in particular — but Zoom appears poised to remain dominant in the sphere for the foreseeable future.