The year of Zoom calls and Google meets

Zoom- probably this word this year is equivalent to what Facebook was back in 2012. Thanks to the pandemic, zoom call has become a household staple. Some lexicographers have even gone out of their way to put in the word in a few dictionaries in some languages to denote attending task from home.

With lockdown in effect from globally from around March this year, most of the desk jobholders had to pack-up and go indoors. Despite the initial temporary disruption, work resumed for these workforces with the assistance of technological solutions that were most commonly used: Messenger, Viber, WhatsApp etc. But Zoom, a relatively lesser popular tool in Bangladesh, saw a sharp rise in popularity. This popularity was due to the fact that it was one of the readily available free tools that could accommodate a high number of audiences without any interruption. From ministries to schools, organisations of different magnitude adopted Zoom as their primary driver for work from home (WFH). Zoom, seeing the demand, capitalised the situation by offering unlimited duration on calls for a good period of time. But this service provider wasn't above issues- security concern was one of the biggest issues that plagued the platform. There were numerous instances where hackers hijacked the feed of important calls and displayed obscene images or videos. Due to all these, Zoom has been even banned by some government and private organisations across the world.

Yet still, no. of Zoom call in Bangladesh kept on increasing in Bangladesh. Although Zoom did not respond to the request of statistics and number regarding Bangladesh, several third-party sites offered a vague indicator of how popular the service is in Bangladesh. According to website traffic analysis service Alexa, Zoom is the 18th most popular site in Bangladesh Another web traffic analysis tool SimilarWeb offers even deeper insights: a total of 354.7 Million visits to the site alone in the month of November with the average spent amount of time of 20:08 minutes.

Zoom wasn't the only player in the market in Bangladesh. Google Meet, an offering now part of Google's business suite, has also gained popularity in the country. Some other similar services that saw a surge in usage are Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, BlueJeans, DingTalk, WeChat etc. In local and particularly in Multinational organisations, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex are quite popular.

Undoubtedly, these video-conferencing tools have been pivotal in driving business in most organisations. But most users have attested that video calls are tiring and create a toll on the mind. Zoom fatigue, a term coined by many psychologists, is real. During the peak of lockdown, many users started to report stress and anxiety which many experts have deduced are due to these rampant video calls. A species that thrived on the face to face interaction, had suddenly been caged due to a pandemic. But with COVID vaccines rolling out slowly across the globe, the 'Zoom Blues' are expected to go down steadily. Maybe people will stop resorting to video-calls for work. Or will they? We will have to wait and see.