Zoom happy hours. Zoom parties. Zoom classes. Zoom Senate meetings. Zoom pranks. Zoom yoga. Zoom karate.
These are all things that have become common parlance in the past month or two, as the world continues to turn to videoconferencing technology — among which Zoom ($ZM) has risen to prominence — to connect, get things done, and just blow off some steam.
But lately, people are beginning to ponder things like "Zoom fatigue". Defined as a "form of exhaustion from excessive video chatting", social scientists are now saying that excessive Zoom meetings disrupt normal forms of human communication as we all stare at images of ourselves in video calls and are unable to read body language from those we're chatting with.
In short, the honeymoon for Zoom is over, and now it's just become another necessary — and sometimes intrusive — tool in our new at-home lives. The data seems to reflect this, too: the Zoom honeymoon may be over.
Back in March, everyone was talking about Zoom. We were setting up family gatherings, happy hours, even trivia nights. At one point on March 19, Zoom was mentioned nearly 40,000 times in just 24 hours. Before that, a normal day saw less than 1,000 mentions of the brand on the world's largest social network. But the app's "talking about" count has since cooled off, quickly coasting to less than 7,000 mentions per day.
Around the same time as its "talking about" spike, Zoom picked up thousands of new followers for its Facebook page. In early March, Zoom had 160,000 followers. As of this week, it claims 282,000. But its rate of new followers on Facebook is clearly slowing down and will likely plateau in the coming weeks - especially as more US states reopen their economies and people are less likely to need video chat services.
App engagement as measured by review activity and ratings reflects a similar cooling off. While the number of reviews for Zoom on the Apple App store jumped in early April, it's now showing signs of flattening out. Meanwhile, average review scores have dropped since early April as users discover usability quirks and other frustrations through repeated use.
None of this means that things are bad for Zoom. Just the opposite, in fact. All this means is that the honeymoon period for the videoconferencing app is over. The happy hours and family gatherings aren't quite as novel as they once were, and we're now simply accepting Zoom as part of our professional — and sometimes personal — lives.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales, and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue, and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
