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Comment by ethelward | Hacker News Reader

> Zoom was the very first to let people join meetings without a) signing up; and b) downloading anything

E.g. BigBlueButton and Jitsi were doing it for much longer.

Both of those do not consistently work across a large organisation (1k+ users) without perfectly homogenous hardware. That means they're effectively unusable.

For an overwhelming majority of Zoom users, scaling over 1k users is not a concern.

Which is irrelevant because those who knew about those are not the significant majority which is responsible for the success of zoom

So the point is not that zoom was better UX wise, but simply had better marketing, or not?

Both.

Honestly - there's huge, massive room for better UX that would really revolutionize online communication:

- Presence indicator/avatar in your toolbar of close contacts or team

- Push-to-talk to send audio to anyone from toolbar with non-disruptive indicator

- Instant screen/mouse share from there with audio and floating video optional

- Just so many fluidity improvements if you do a more minimal video window that can add/remove people without friction

I really wish someone would build it.

"Hey Bot, find out from Alice when I need to have those slides finished. Kind of urgent."

It immediately sends an email and a slack message. An hour later, it asks if you want to send an SMS or call to Alice.

Jitsi was awful. So it’s a combo. Zoom wouldn’t be where it is if it was Jitsi. I used Jitsi from 2018-2020. So many problems with it. You won’t find anywhere close to the polarizing views of the actual usability or Jitsi compared to Zoom or any other better app in any niche.

Zoom certainly invested millions in marketing before and during the pandemic. Airports were plastered with zoom advertisement. I truly believe marketing and a simple ordering process account for a huge part of zoom's success, not features or UX.

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