It’s funny how Zoom keeps getting into trouble. There’s another problem now. The Verge noticed the company had quietly edited a blog post making the claim that they had 300 million daily users, earlier this month.

Zoom Claims

The company stated that they had “more than 300 million people around the world using Zoom during this challenging time.” Zoom later deleted these references from the original blog post, and now, according to The Verge, claim to have “300 million daily Zoom meeting participants.”

To anyone, that may seem like it’s pretty much the same thing. However, it isn’t.

Start off your week with tech news recap and trending conversations in your inbox

Enter valid email-id

Subscribe

I prefer it on Telegram

So What’s The Difference?

The difference between a daily active user and “meeting participant” is quite significant.

• Daily meeting participants can be counted multiple times. For example, if you have five Zoom meetings in a day, then you’re counted five times.
• However, a daily user is counted once a day. Only counting meeting participants is an easy, somewhat misleading, way to make your platform usage seem larger than it is.

The misleading blog was edited on April 24th, a day after the numbers made headlines worldwide. The company added a note to the blog post admitting the error yesterday, and provided the following statement:

We are humbled and proud to help over 300 million daily meeting participants stay connected during this pandemic. In a blog post on April 22, we unintentionally referred to these participants as “users” and “people.” When we realized this error, we adjusted the wording to “participants.” This is a genuine oversight on our part.

The Growth Is Immense Everywhere

Zoom’s growth has been a force to reckon with. Zoom usage has soared from 10 million daily meeting participants back in December to 300 million this month.

Nevertheless, rivals like Microsoft Teams and Google Meet appear to be closing the gap. Microsoft said yesterday it now has 75 million daily active users of Teams. Google Meet is adding roughly 3 million new users each day, and hit over 100 million daily Meet meeting participants recently.