Top 10 Videoconferencing software

Latest news about Videoconferencing software

2023. Zoom partners with Anthropic to bring Claude chatbot to Zoom products



With the increasing prominence of generative AI, Zoom has recognized the importance of partnering with Language Model (LLM) companies to navigate the evolving AI landscape. In line with this strategy, Zoom has recently announced its collaboration with Anthropic, a partnership that will involve leveraging Anthropic's Claude chatbot on the Zoom platform, initially focusing on the Zoom Contact Center. The objective of this partnership is to enhance customer support by providing more accurate responses while minimizing instances where the models generate fictional answers in the absence of the correct response. Zoom plans to continue collaborating with the Anthropic model and gain a deeper understanding of its workings. Eventually, the intention is to incorporate this technology into other Zoom products. It is important to note that there is currently no specific timeline for the introduction of Anthropic-based functionality to the market. However, Zoom remains committed to ongoing development in this area.


2023. Zoom acquires employee communications platform Workvivo



Zoom has announced its intention to purchase Workvivo, an Irish startup that has been operating for six years with a focus on enhancing internal communication and culture within businesses. Unlike Zoom and other similar communication tools, Workvivo places a greater emphasis on asynchronous communication rather than real-time communication. Its platform is designed to promote employee engagement on a broader level, offering features such as an activity feed, people directory, surveys, and a channel for important company announcements, similar to a modern intranet. Workvivo has gained a notable customer base since its establishment in Cork in 2017, with companies such as Amazon, RyanAir, and Bupa among its clients.

2023. Zoom announces AI features that act as your personal assistant



Video conferencing provider Zoom announced new additions to its AI-powered tool Zoom IQ. The new features leverage OpenAI's Large Language Model, or LLM, to summarize meetings, generate recaps, and draft chat and email responses. On the heels of announcements from Microsoft, Google, and Slack, Zoom is the latest major productivity tool to get the AI treatment. Zoom IQ already uses AI to give users meeting information through chapters, highlights from recordings, and action items. But it is taking it a step further by integrating OpenAI's powerful generative AI model. If you're late to a meeting, Zoom IQ can summarize in real time what you've missed and ask questions for you. Using text prompts, it can generate brainstorms using Zoom's whiteboard tool.


2023. Zoom is adding new features to compete with Slack, Calendly, Google and Microsoft



Zoom is expanding its offerings to compete with a range of companies, including Slack, Calendly, Google, and Microsoft, by introducing new features such as AI-powered meeting summaries, prompt-based email responses, and whiteboard generation, in addition to video "Huddles" and a meeting scheduler. Zoom aims to encourage users to shift more of their work tasks to its platform, and as such, it is making its email and calendar clients available to everyone. The company had been testing these tools since last year as part of a broader push beyond meetings. Furthermore, Zoom is offering hosted email and calendar services with end-to-end encryption protection and custom domains for paid users, which could serve as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange and Google Workspace for businesses.


2022. Meta partners with Microsoft to bring VR to Teams



Meta has announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring Windows apps and Teams tie-ins, to Meta’s metaverse hardware efforts. This means that Microsoft Teams will integrate with Quest devices and that Microsoft will provide a way to stream Windows apps to Meta’s headsets. Custom 3D avatars will eventually come to the experience. Horizon Workrooms, Meta’s VR space for collaboration, will connect with Teams, allowing people to join a Teams meeting directly from Workrooms. Microsoft 365 will come to Quest in a way that lets users interact with content from productivity apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. These aren’t full-blown versions of apps designed for VR, importantly; They’re Progressive Web Apps, rather.


2022. Google Meet gets automatic meeting transcriptions



Google is bringing automatic meeting transcriptions to its Meet video conferencing service. Until now, you needed a third-party service like Otter to record and transcribe your call for you. Now it’s a built-in service. The new feature is now available for meetings in English, with support for French, German, Spanish and Portuguese coming in 2023. Microsoft Teams, of course, started offering a similar feature for meetings in English more than a year ago. Given Google’s experience with other speech-to-text services like its Assistant or the Android Recorder app, it’s a bit odd that it took this long to add this to Meet, but better late than never.


2022. AI-powered videoconferencing platform Headroom raises $9M



Headroom, a startup developing AI-powered software to make meetings ostensibly more efficient, has raised $9M. Headroom uses AI to power features like automatic transcripts and meeting summaries, which remain indexable after meetings with search filters for attendees, notes and topics. The platform offers full meeting replays and auto-generated highlight reels with key moments and action items, plus AI-powered upscaling and quick reactions like “thumbs up” and “wave” that participants can use during meetings. But one of the more unique things about Headroom is its extensive analytics capabilities. The app tries to quantify “real-time meeting energy” by analyzing video, audio and text of and from various attendees. It even tracks eye movements and hand and head poses, attempting to figure out the sentiment in a person’s exchanges.


2022. Google Meet’s new feature lets users consume YouTube and Spotify together



Google announced that it’s introducing new Apple SharePlay-like live-sharing features to Google_Meet, making it easier for call-participants to engage with content together in real time. It’s worth noting that Google already introduced some live-sharing features (e.g. watching YouTube videos together) to Duo back in February, and now it’s bringing them to Meet as the part of the Duo-Meet merger. The live-sharing feature will let users watch YouTube videos together. These new features will be available under a new Activities tab — which also hosts Q&A and polls options — and is accessible through the three-dot menu.


2022. Zoom dives deeper into intelligent customer service with Solvvy acquisition



Previous year Zoom wanted to buy Five9 to get into customer service. Eventually the deal fell apart, but Zoom’s desire to get into customer service one way or the other didn’t diminish. Earlier this year, the company announced a new customer service solution, which would take advantage of existing Zoom capabilities. By pulling together some existing functions, the company was able to offer a customer service experience inside the Zoom tool set. Now, the company announced plans to extend that by acquiring Solvvy, a nine-year-old startup that concentrates on conversational AI. With Solvvy, the company gets more automation and intelligence and the ability to clear routine questions without having to speak to a person.


2022. Zoom announces Zoom Whiteboard, gesture recognition among several updates



Zoom announced a slate of updates and new features, including a virtual whiteboard and gesture recognition. Among the updates is Zoom IQ for Sales, which uses AI to analyze calls. Zoom also added Gesture Recognition, which means that instead of clicking on a reaction you can raise a hand or put a thumbs up to display that reaction in the call. It’s only limited to those two gestures for now, and requires client version 5.10.3 or later. It’s disabled by default at the client level and you can enable it at the account, user or individual level.


2022. Zoom launches AI-powered features aimed at sales teams



Zoom has announced Zoom IQ for Sales, a product that uses AI to analyze sales meetings and deals to provide insights. It’s the company’s first explicit foray into sales automation software. In many ways, Zoom IQ for Sales is an outgrowth of Zoom’s increasing investments in AI. Zoom last May introduced an AI-powered feature that shows highlights from recorded meetings, automatically selecting the “best” parts of meetings based on keywords from audio transcriptions. The company more recently acquired Kites, a startup specializing in real-time translation and transcription.


2021. Virtual meeting platform Vowel raises $13.5M



Virtual meeting platform Vowel has raised $13.5 million. Vowel is launching a meeting operating system with tools like real-time transcription; integrated agendas, notes and action items; meeting analytics; and searchable, on-demand recordings of meetings. The company has a freemium business model and will also be rolling out a business plan this fall for $16 per user per month. Extra features will include advanced integrations, security and admin controls. Vowel is out to bring Slack, Figma and GitHub components to meetings by recording audio and video that can be paused at any time. Users can add notes and see where those notes fall within a real-time transcription that enables people who arrive late or could not make the meeting to catch up easily. After meetings are over, they can be shared, and Vowel has a search function so that users can go back and see where a particular person or topic was discussed.


2021. Cisco to acquire startup Socio to bring hybrid events to Webex



Cisco buys startup Socio, which helps plan hybrid in-person and virtual events. Socio provides a missing hybrid event management component for the company to add to its Webex platform. The goal appears to be to combine this with the recent purchase of Slido and transform Webex from an application mostly for video meetings into a more comprehensive event platform. Socio was founded in 2016 and raised around $7 million in investment capital, according to Crunchbase data. It has a prestigious list of enterprise customers that includes Microsoft, Google, Jet Blue, Greenpeace, PepsiCo and Hyundai.


2021. Google Meet gets a refreshed UI, multipinning, autozoom and more



Google released a major update to its video-meeting service Google Meet, which brings several user interface tweaks for desktop users, as well as quite a bit of new functionality, including multipinning so that you can highlight multiple feeds instead of just one, as well as new AI-driven video capabilities for light adjustments, autozoom and a new Data Saver feature that limits data usage on slower mobile networks. For presenters who don’t want to see themselves on the screen, Meet now also lets you minimize or completely hide your own video feed — and if you really want to glance into your own eyes, you can also pin your feed to the rest of the grid.


2021. Daily raises $15M Series A for its real-time video platform



Daily, the makers of a developer platform for real-time audio and video, has closed $15 million Series A funding. With Daily’s platform, developers can either use a prebuilt UI to integrate video calls with just two lines of code, or they can opt to build out their own custom video UI and UX. With the former, developers can embed a video call widget that features video chat, screen sharing and recording capabilities. Meanwhile, the latter gives developers more control over the layout, workflow and video and audio tracks.


2020. Here.fm raises $2.9M to reimagine video chat



Here.fm, a new web-based communication platform, has closed $2.9M seed round. In contrast too Zoom, it provides a fully customizable room with video chat built on top of it, giving users the ability to decorate their room with virtual items, gifs, backgrounds, notes, pictures, etc. And, of course, these users can also customize their own video chat window and those of others, arranging them in the room in the size and shape that they prefer. As with any other video chat software, users can also share their screen. Competition in this space is heating up. Mmhmm offers similar tools to customize the video chat room, but focuses more on presenting than hanging out. Macro is a tool that sits on top of a Zoom call to help ensure meetings are productive and efficient. And then there are the dozens (if not more) of startups that sprung to action at the onset of the pandemic to build out the next-generation of video chat.


2020. Dialpad acquires video conferencing service Highfive



VoIP provider Dialpad, the company behind the popular video conferencing service UberConference, today announced that it has acquired Highfive, a well-funded video conferencing startup that focuses on providing businesses with conference room solutions. Dialpad is clearly aiming to double down on video. While UberConference does have built-in video conferencing features already, the service is mostly known for its calling features. In addition to its conference call solutions and VoiP platform for business users, Dialpad also offers a contact center solution.


2020. Kudo raises $6M for its real-time translation and video conference platform



SaaS is hot in 2020. Tooling that helps facilitate remote work is hot in 2020. And we all know that anything related to video chatting in particular is on fire this year. So, it's not surprising that Kudo, the service that provides video chatting and conferencing tool with built-in support for translators and multiple audio streams, has raised $6 million. KUDO streams real-time interpretation to your web meetings and live conferences, so everyone can speak in their mother tongue. Kudo is SaaS with an optional services component, though given the lower margins inherent to services over software.


2020. Huddl.ai wants to bring more intelligence to online meetings



Huddl.ai is a startup that wants to bring a dose of artificial intelligence to online meeting technology. It uses AI tools to transcribe the meeting, pull out the salient points and help users understand what happened without poring over notes to find the key information in a long session. While current solutions (Zoom, Cisco WebEx, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams) simply give you a link to a cloud room and everyone involved clicks and enters. Huddl wants to bring some more structure to that whole process.


2020. Macro raises $4.3M to make your never-ending Zoom calls more useful


Macro is a native app that employs the Zoom SDK to add depth and analysis to your daily work meetings. There are two modes. The first is essentially focused on collaboration, which turns the usual Zoom meeting into a light overlay, where folks are shown in small, circular bubbles at the top of the screen. This mode is to be used when folks are working on the same project, such as a wireframe or a collaborative document. The other mode is an Arena or Stadium mode, which is meant for hands-on meetings and presentations. It has two distinct features. The first is an Airtime feature, which shows how much different participants have ‘had the floor’ for the past five minutes, thirty minutes, or in total during the meeting. The second is a text-input system on the right side of the UI that lets people enter Questions, Takeaways, Action Items and Insights from the call.


2020. Zoom announces new Hardware as a Service offering



Zoom announced a new Hardware as a Service offering today that will run on the ServiceNow platform. At the same time, the company announced a deal with ServiceNow to standardize on Zoom and Zoom Phone for its 11,000 employees in another case of SaaS cooperation. For starters, the new Hardware as a Service offering allows customers, who use the Zoom Phone and Zoom Rooms software, to acquire related hardware from the company for a fixed monthly cost. The company announced that initial solutions providers will include DTEN, Neat, Poly and Yealink.


2020. Google Meet takes on Zoom by going completely free for everyone



Google announced that Google Meet, its premium videoconferencing software, is going free for everyone. Previously, Meet was only available as a part of Google's G Suite business-oriented service package, which starts at $6 per month per person, but now it will be free to anyone with a Google account. Availability will be gradually expanded in the "following weeks," as Google wants to make sure the experience stays secure and reliable. Meetings on the free version of Meet will be restricted to 60 minutes – though Google says it won't enforce the time limit until after Sept. 30. For comparison, some Zoom video calls on the free version of the software are limited to 40 minutes. There are other limitations, too: The free version only supports 100 participants versus 250 for the paid version, and recording and saving calls is only available on the paid version.


2020. Google Meet adds Zoom-style gallery view



Google is adding a Zoom-style gallery view to one of its video-chat products - Google Meet. Importantly, the service is not free to everyone with a Google account like Hangouts. Rather, it is a paid enterprise service primarily aimed at businesses. The least expensive G Suite tier that gets you access to Google Meet costs $6 per month, per user. The "most popular" version costs $12 per month, per person. In other words, you're paying a premium for a feature that competitors like Zoom offer for free.


2020. Verizon is buying B2B videoconferencing firm BlueJeans



US carrier Verizon has splashed out to buy veteran B2B videoconferencing platform, BlueJeans Network for less than $500 million. Videoconferencing platform Blue Jeans has raised ~$175M since being founded around a decade ago. The acquisition comes at a time when videoconferencing is seeing a massive uptick in usage as white collar workers around the world log on to meetings from home during the coronavirus pandemic.Although it’s BlueJeans’ rival, Zoom, that’s been the most high profile name linked to the viral videoconferencing boom in recent weeks.


2020. Google is rebranding Hangouts services



Google has officially removed the Hangouts brand from its enterprise G Suite offering with the rebranding of Hangouts Chat as Google Chat and Hangouts Meet as Google Meet. As for the Hangouts brand, it will continue to live on as the name of the consumer chat app that Google spun out of its shutdown social network Google+ back in 2013 as a spiritual successor to Gchat.


2020. Skype has a Zoom-like video call function called 'Meet Now'



Skype kindly reminded the world of its existence with a tweet. It turns out that Skype actually has a video chat Zoom-like functionality called Meet Now that doesn't require having a Skype account or the app. Skype Meet Now lets you generate a meeting URL that you can send to participants. It's easy to use in the web-based client but if you select the option of opening the Skype app, the meeting wouldn't open. Which brings us to why Skype appears to have missed the boat on the video calling boom.


2019. GoToMeeting improved AI-transcription in videoconferencing software


LogMeIn announced the new version of GoToMeeting, that focuses on delivering a simple, intuitive end-user experience, while giving IT even more control over deployment, management, and security. In this new release, GoToMeeting has launched a series of updates to improve the ease of the collaboration platform for IT and users before, during and after the meeting: completely reimagined video-first design (unified on all devices), unparalleled quality audio, real-time notes, AI-powered transcription. Hosts can now create multiple personal meeting rooms with custom branding for teams to jump in and collaborate instantly at any time. GoToMeeting has also updated its popular calendar plugins and integrations with Office 365 and Outlook, GSuite Calendar, Salesforce, and more and continues to support integrations with tools like Slack and Zoho.


2019. Polycom (and Plantronics) rebrand as Poly



Plantronics has announced that the company will transform into Poly, a technology company focused on the human experience of communications and collaboration, aiming to make communication as rich and natural as in-person. And as part of this rebranding Polycom video-conferencing software is also getting the same name - Poly. Plantronics (known for its audio communications equipment for business and consumers) acquired Polycom for $2B in 2018. Poly, which means “many,” leverages the legendary audio and video expertise of Plantronics and Polycom and its breadth of smart endpoints that connect across and between unified communications platforms to reduce the distractions, complexity, and distance in the modern workspace. Poly aims to be the solution of choice whenever and wherever collaboration clouds reach people.


2018. Google Meet gets voice commands support



Google is enhancing its videoconferencing system Google Meet with voice commands. This will allow users to say, “Hey Google, start the meeting.” And this is just a starting point. They promise to be adding additional commands over time. They will be adding this functionality later this year. Just last Fall, the company launched the Hangouts Meet hardware program, which provided a way for Meet customers to launch meetings using Google or other hardware such as the traditional Cisco or Polycom hardware found in many conference rooms. Google reports that customers have set up thousands of these Hangouts Meet-enabled meeting rooms. By providing some simple commands to set up the meeting, invite participants, join a meeting and so forth using your voice, it can greatly simplify the sometimes complicated activity of meeting administration, which even after all these years often seems unnecessarily complicated and frustrating for many people.


2018. Google Meet integrates with Polycom and Cisco hardware



Google Meet, the new video conferencing solution for businesses, gets support of videoconferencing equipment from the likes of Polycom and Cisco. Any user on those systems will now be able to join a Hangouts Meet video call. These integrations will go live in the coming weeks. Google built this project in partnership with Pexip, a company that specializes in making meeting platform interoperable. Pexip’s specialty is Skype for Business, but for this product, the company is clearly branching out and adding support for Hangouts Meet, too.