Andrew Heinzman
Even as social distancing requirements wane, it seems like virtual conferences and events are here to stay. Now, Zoom is working on a dedicated Events platform to help make multi-day virtual conferences a bit more tolerable (and profitable).
Zoom Events builds on the company’s first event “marketplace,” called OnZoom. The service caters to enterprise customers and companies, offering several features that help keep conferences organized and emulate the social aspect of in-person events.
Opening a Zoom Event will bring you to a central hub where you can register your attendance or buy a virtual ticket. Once you’re signed in, you can see all of a conference’s upcoming meetings and presentations, even if they span throughout an entire week. Whoever’s running the Zoom Event can add short video previews to all of the upcoming meetings, or choose which meetings attendees can and can’t see .
Interestingly, Zoom Events will include a lobby feature that mimics the cocktail parties of in-person events. If you join a meeting early or stick around after it ends, you can chat with other people via text and exchange contact information.
And while it’s hard to track how many people actually participate in online conferences, Zoom Events will include detailed statistics on attendance, ticket sales, and other stats. For that reason, it could become a popular platform for online conventions and music festivals, not just corporate get-togethers.
In a way, Zoom Events sound somewhat similar to Facebook Events, which recently added tickets and livestreams to its feature-set. But its focus on large, multi-day conferences could help it stand out in the corporate world, or even become a leading platform for online conventions and festivals. If you want to keep up with Zoom Events as it launches this summer, sign up for the company’s mailing list now.
