Zoom quickly became a household name at the beginning of the pandemic, when everything from business meetings to happy hours switched over to the platform. Although Zoom has its limits, it remains a much-used video conferencing tool, and the company has made it clear over the past few months that it intends to continue innovating in the virtual event space.
Following the October launch of OnZoom, a service much like Eventbrite that allowed users to host and monetize events, Zoom has just announced that it will be launching a new platform later this summer to further support virtual experiences. This new platform, aptly called Zoom Events, will be “an all-in-one platform with the power to produce interactive and engaging virtual experiences.”
OnZoom will be integrated into the Zoom Events platform once it launches and will act as a searchable directory of events. Zoom Events will allow users to create a hub where they can manage all of their events in one place, provide ticketing and registration for attendees, and track metrics such as attendance and revenue.
With this new platform, Zoom is also taking a page from the playbook of existing virtual platforms by offering a chat feature that will allow attendees to network and connect in virtual event lobbies, outside of video calls.
“We know that people are looking for flexibility in how they attend events in the future,” Oded Gal, chief product officer at Zoom, said in a statement. “The hybrid model is here to stay, and Zoom Events is a perfect solution for our customers who are looking to produce and host customer, company, and public events with an easy, yet powerful solution.”
Zoom had a record year in 2020, and it has been proactively seeking ways to remain relevant amid a looming return to some sort of normalcy. Virtual meetings and events aren’t going anywhere, so it’s safe to say that many of those who are already using Zoom will continue to do so in some capacity even once live events resume, and Zoom Events will give them more reason to stay on the platform. For most planners, however, the new service likely won’t give them much reason to abandon the more robust virtual platforms they’ve been using up to this point.