Zoom Is Mulling a Chat Function to Level the Playing Field With Slack, Teams

Zoom is reportedly hiring a “significant number of engineers” to add a Slack-esque chat collaboration function in its video conferencing platform. The move signals how Zoom wants to become a clear market leader in collaboration space and crush all other competitors. 

Zoom has reportedly turned another page in the collaboration playbook by making a start on a Slack-type messaging function. The video conferencing major is working on a new messaging feature update to its video conferencing platform according to ‘two people familiar with the matter’, as reported by The InformationOpens a new window .  

“The goal of the new service is to offer more advanced messaging features akin to those found in products like Slack.” Zoom currently offers basic text messaging alongside its widely popular video meeting service.

The move underpins Zoom’s ambition to rival Microsoft Teams, the new poster boy for enterprise collaboration. Microsoft Teams has widely benefited from the bundled vs. best-of-breed approach with Office 365 users coalescing behind this platform. 

Zoom is currently riding strong on its COVID-19-fueled growth and posted $663.5 revenue in Q2 2020. The video conferencing major netted around 370,000 customers. By comparison, Slack failed to capitalize on the pandemic boom but maintained a consistent 49% revenue growth year-over-year (YoY). Meanwhile, Microsoft Teams boasts 200 millionOpens a new window participants by the end of April this year, while Zoom has 300 millionOpens a new window daily meeting participants.

See Also: Is Zoom the Biggest Benefactor of COVID-19?

The advanced new messaging feature for which Zoom is amassing top tech talent could potentially push its user base to new levels. So far, Zoom’s success has hinged on its ever-growing mid-sized and large enterprise user base — the new team chat update which could potentially push its uptake and drive significant subscriptions to the platform. 

However, at this moment, it is unclear whether the messaging feature in Zoom would be similar to Slack’s channel-based messaging functionality. Meanwhile, messaging in Teams is also not channel-based.

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