Zoom is the accidental social network of the coronavirus pandemic
What I’m Thinking About: Zoom
This has been an incredible rise and a little bit of a fall for Zoom.
In the past month, they went from 10 million daily users to 200 million. Wowza. In the past week 90,000 schools across 20 countries have used it to conduct remote classes. Ninety thousand schools.
They also revealed that while they’ve been focused on keeping up with growth, they’ve done some not great things. Specifically, they were sending info to Facebook even if you didn’t log in or ever use Facebook. Second, the videos/calls aren’t really encrypted, which means others can see and hear what went on. Oh, and third, many of the videos and encryption keys were routed through China so they were available for the Chinese state to hear and view. Hmm. 🤔
Personally, I don’t care if my personal or work calls are viewed in China but I suspect a lot of more important people and companies do. This could be real bad for them and for Zoom. I’m curious to see what the fallout is.
I’m also curious to see how Zoom integrates itself more into my life. I’ve been doing double-dates with friends, group family chats, happy hours, school lessons and more. It’s a daily app now.
Finally, I usually really dislike recorded Zoom calls, but here’s one I couldn’t stop watching. It’s ESPN reporters inviting famous people to join them.
Katie Nolan challenged her ESPN friends to invite the most famous person they know to a Zoom call, and the results are spectacular.
This should be a weekly show but with even more famous people involved. I wanna see Denzel randomly pop into a Zoompic.twitter.com/vV4kGzgPDd
— Kendall Baker (@TheKendallBaker) April 10, 2020
What Else: The Flattening?
Nationally, the number of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. is projected to hit its peak within the next few days. Personally, I’ve been hoping that this is the worst as we had a few days of no growth, but yesterday we had peaks in new cases and deaths in the US and many others charts are saying that we still have some more time to go. 😞
NEW: Fri 10 April update of coronavirus trajectories
Daily new deaths:
• US & UK still on clear trend of rising daily deaths. Reporting patterns may give occasional dips, but clearly trending up 📈
• India daily death toll accelerating ⚠️Live charts: https://t.co/JxVd2cG7KI pic.twitter.com/5eEuSKc4az
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) April 10, 2020
Other Stuff
This is what you get if you cross @Simone_Biles and Indiana Jones. This is almost as impressive as that mane he has on his head. I wish we could see the first 1000 times he tried it though… pic.twitter.com/r6exf2vfbj
— Joe Buck (@Buck) March 30, 2020
Great ad:
Easily one of the best social distancing ads I’ve seen pic.twitter.com/9WhhTHmdPc
— 𝙹𝚘𝚜𝚑 𝙶𝚛𝚞𝚋𝚋𝚜 (@JoshuaGrubbsPhD) April 9, 2020
