Online chat platforms have been around for a while. Discord has been around since 2011. Skype was made way back in 2003. Zoom is one of the most popular services that has risen up during the times of the pandemic, for schooling, work, and all sorts of other things. But Zoom isn’t as recent as you might think.

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Just like Discord, Zoom was developed back in 2011 by Eric Yuan, former corporate vice president for Cisco Webex, under the name Saasbee. It changed its name to Zoom in May 2012. Later in 2013, Zoom became partnered with business-to-business collaboration software providers such as Redbooth, Logitech, Vaddio, and InFocus. Zoom continued to grow over the years little by little, expanding with more customers and upgrading its software to allow more and bigger meetings to take place.

Zoom really started getting popular in 2019, when COVID-19 came around. Since the world began quarantining, education and work had to find a way around the problem in order to continue, this is where Zoom stepped in. Not only was Zoom used for classrooms and work though, but social events such as meetings with friends, birthday parties, lunch meetings, even dates. In the year 2020, Zoom was experiencing 300 million meetings every day. This skyrocketed from the meek 10 million in December of 2019.

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It is an absolute wonder how one platform became so popular so fast. The pandemic and quarantine pushed it to do so, but it was a surprise to many who previously knew Skype and Discord as the main online communication platforms to suddenly be pushed into a “brand new” site called Zoom. Even if it was nine years old.

To those previously used to online meetings, the switch was more than comfortable. But to everyone else, it was a rocky turn of the ship that doesn’t seem to be changing course any day soon.