Videoconferencing giant Zoom has reached a historic milestone. The platform is now capable of handling webinars with up to one million participants simultaneously. This technological feat comes on the heels of a series of political events that brought together hundreds of thousands of people to support Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.
XXL webinars for all uses
Zoom now offers different plans to host large-scale events. Customers can choose webinars with maximum capacities of 10,000, 50,000, 100,000, 250,000, 500,000 and thus 1 million participants. These are single-use packages, which include support from the Zoom Event Services team to ensure a professional and engaging experience for all. Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer at Zoom, is pleased:
Event organizers now have the flexibility and power to create truly interactive experiences at unprecedented scale, as well as the ability to purchase large, single-use webinars.
Beyond politics, Zoom envisions a future where these giant virtual events will become mainstream in businesses, entertainment, and the public sector. Celebrities could use these webinars to host meet-ups with fans, for example. Clearly, Zoom is on the verge of inventing Twitch-style streaming, with the only differentiator being increased interactivity because viewers can participate directly in the videoconference with their webcams.
A financial lever for Zoom
But this capacity leap comes at a cost: $100,000 for a webinar of one million people. A rate that remains competitive, since a webinar for 10,000 people is billed at $9,000, or almost $1 per participant.
The move represents a lucrative new revenue stream for Zoom, whose stock plummeted from $560 to $60 after the pandemic peaked and people returned to in-person events. By betting on mega-events, Zoom hopes to bounce back and diversify its model.
The Kamala Harris Effect
It all started last July, when the organization Win with Black Women hosted a Zoom call with more than 40,000 participants, raising $1.5 million for Harris’ campaign. Other groups like White Dudes for Harris (190,000 participants) and White Women for Harris (164,000) followed.
Before this change, Zoom officially only supported 100,000 participants. But according to Bloomberg, the company has quietly modified its capacities to adapt to these massive fundraisings. A flexibility that could be emulated by politicians looking for new methods of crowdfunding.
While Zoom, Google and Microsoft compete to attract major events to their platforms, one player is conspicuous by its absence: Apple. The apple brand does not offer an equivalent to Teams or Meet, and even less mega-webinars. FaceTime is more positioned on confidential video calls, in family or between friends who have the same ecosystem. Perhaps it is time to offer an equivalent to Teams or Zoom?
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