The coronavirus pandemic has been a troubling time for most of the world population, with education in schools and universities temporarily ceasing, businesses struggling to stay open during lockdown and, above all, a stifling sense of uncertainty regarding our futures, health and wellbeing that is permeating the entire world.
Despite the fact that most of us are begrudgingly accepting our new reality, there are businesses and applications which are thriving now more than ever before since they have managed to capitalise off people’s boredom and need to stay in contact with the outside world. These websites or apps are by no means successful solely thanks to the lockdown; they were already reasonably successful in their own right, but one thing they all have in common is the fact that they have each seen exponential growth since the commencement of lockdown.
Zoom
The video conferencing website “Zoom” is one of the pieces of software which has most notably managed to excel during the lockdown. Just like Uber and Snapchat have become verbs in colloquial Anglicised language, so has “Zoom”, which indicates just how much it has become ingrained in our consciousness.
During March 2020, Zoom was downloaded 28 million times and Skype a mere 7 million times on Apple devices
With millions of people across the globe having to work remotely from home, Zoom’s installations have soared by 728% according to market intelligence firm SensorTower since March 2nd, 2020.
In order to truly understand the extent to which Zoom has been able to grow during the coronavirus pandemic, it would be useful to compare it to its main competitor: Skype. During March 2020, Zoom was downloaded 28 million times and Skype a mere 7 million times on Apple devices.
Disney+
One may think that Disney+ would have a limited market given that it only has children’s movies. Yet figures show otherwise, with more than 80% of its users being between the ages of 18 to 34.
eMarketer analyst Ross Benes points out that Disney+ did not seem to have any issue attracting customers from its launch in November meaning that they had some time to get established before the coronavirus hit. So whilst Disney+ was already a very well established streaming platform, they experienced a massive surge from the moment that lockdowns came into place, with an astounding 43% surge in traffic.
Hub research found that watching more Disney+ was the number one activity that got the most attention at this time, ahead of watching either Hulu or Netflix.
Houseparty
Houseparty is a platform very similar to Zoom; it is a social app that allows its users to video-chat each other but with a twist: you can play a variety of different games such as Trivia questions or Heads Up and it tends to be used in a much more informal context than Zoom, as its name alludes to.
Despite recent controversy surrounding the app, when it was accused by many people across social media of hacking into people’s bank accounts, Houseparty has still managed to prosper. As with the two aforementioned platforms, Houseparty already saw a degree of success before the lockdown was implemented in the UK.
Houseparty saw a 2,902% increase in the number of times that it was downloaded between February and March
According to BusinessofApps, Houseparty saw a 2,902% increase in the number of times that it was downloaded between February and March (which is when most countries across the world started going into lockdown).
Ploumy Coutsiouri
Featured Image courtesy of andy orin via Flickr. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
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