As we digitize our work, studies, doctor visits, scientific and cultural conferences, technology presentations, and most importantly, our personal lives, companies have been at the forefront of inventing new ways to improve our video communication experience. more exciting. Someone introduced new functions, trying to make virtual events similar to live conferences, someone made their services free, someone bet on bright filters and funny masks, and someone often used avatars of participants and the use of conference, presentation, meeting, etc. ability to edit. Meanwhile, Zoom has become a verb, often used in place of long formulations and idioms. However, a real revolution never happened. In fact, we only got a slightly better video chat, and the actual experience of using it is the same boring situation as it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Goodbye to video conferencing

Now the world is slowly returning to its old life. Some companies try to get workers back to the office, encounter dissatisfaction and even often face layoffs because of their reluctance to leave home for work. From the very beginning, many people cite the availability of remote work as a mandatory point on their resume. But many have returned to office, which has shaken the position of some companies. Small players were particularly affected. Large companies continue to dominate the market.

These small companies, which built their businesses entirely on video calling technology, were shut down without firing a shot. Others, which only provide virtual conferencing as a feature, have begun canceling it or selling parts of the business. A few more are living their last days. But most of them you haven’t even heard of, because they died faster than they had time to take off.

• Hopin outsourced video calls to RingCentral as part of a “strategic relationship.”
• Mmhmm ​​barely available, losing its user base.
• Houseparty, a group video chat app from the creators of Meerkat, was acquired by Epic Games in 2019 but shut down in 2021.
• Verizon just announced that it is shutting down BlueJeans.
• Even Snap turned off Snap Camera.

How does the market look now?

• Zoom is still number one. Of course, it also lost a certain audience, but its popularity did its job. Users flocked to a single service, identifying the best fit in terms of quality and functionality. However, even with additional features like face effects, avatars, and AI resumes, calls to the service are surprisingly similar to calls at the start of the pandemic. Does it fundamentally change anything? NO. Zoom is increasingly trying to develop a business other than video chat, but with dozens of analogues on the market for a long time, almost no one needs an email, calendar or text chat.
• Video calls from Google reached the most advanced levelbut only because they were in a very bad shape before that and developers have something to improve by imitating the competition. In April 2020, Google rebranded the service from “Hangouts Meet” to “Google Meet”, separating the service from the confusing and now dead Hangouts brand. Google has since fixed some bugs and improved overall stability.
• Microsoft continues to invest in video conferencing features As part of the Teams collaboration service. The company has integrated Snapchat Lenses to add some fun to video calls. However, it’s worth noting that it’s distracting here as it’s Skype, which it updates on a massive scale from year to year, but not everyone can admit that its time has long passed.

Regardless, the future of video chats isn’t all that hopeless. Apple has some interesting ideas coming to macOS Sonoma, albeit late. Some are borrowed from others and relate to effects: you will be able to show your face in a small moving bubble, magnify yourself by focusing the attention of the interlocutor, and make various movements to provoke animated reactions. That’s great, of course (especially since they all have to work with apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex), but Are animated fireworks really the best thing we can add to video chat?ironically asks The Verge reporter Jay Peters?

The company made incredible promises. Video is supposed to be the future. Instead, another way of unlocking the phone is not so different from the one we had before covid. Yes, chatting with your friends on Discord lets you play games or watch YouTube videos together, and if you’re using Slack, you can try their video chat for short, impromptu chats similar to desktop chats. But right now the video communication market seems to have reached some kind of impasse. Sure, Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams are great at what they do, and it’s great that things like custom backgrounds and emoji reactions have become the accepted standard no matter what app you use, but when we make a phone call, it’s still mostly people looking at windows and apps are helpful, which quickly becomes boring. turned into programs.