Zoom Adds Single-Use Events for Up to 1 Million Participants

In the wake of having to retool its logistical underpinnings to accommodate the massive numbers participating in fundraising videoconferences for Presidential candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris, Zoom has added large-scale, single-use webinar options to its menu of monthly and annual webinar subscriptions. Customers can now opt for webinars with simultaneous participation of 10K, 50K, 100K, 250K, 500K or 1 million. The single-use packages include support from the Zoom event services team “to ensure hosts deliver a professional, engaging experience.”

In July, a Harris event included 44,000 attendees. That was followed by Zoom events hosted for 190,000 and then 200,000. In all, “virtual events accounted for around $20 million of the $310 million the campaign raised in July,” The Verge reports.

To put the “Zoom rallies” into perspective, Bloomberg pointed out earlier this month that a crowd of 160,000 is “enough people to fill Madison Square Garden eight times over.” However, Zoom calls can connect people across the country.

Now Zoom is opening the expanded vistas to organizations, companies and individuals on a global scale. IDC Research VP of Social, Communities and Collaboration Wayne Kurtzman lauds the expansion in the Zoom announcement, saying it fosters the ability “to produce significant, large-scale, and engaging virtual events.”

Zoom Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim says the move provides “the power to host truly interactive experiences on an unprecedented scale.”

In addition to enterprise uses like uniting a global workforce, the Zoom news release suggests celebrities, brands and public figures “can use Zoom’s expanded webinar capabilities to host virtual events, fan meet-and-greets, and more.”

“These events, however, don’t come cheap,” writes Engadget, noting that “booking a one-time webinar for a million people will set you back a cool $100,000,” adding, “that’s actually a good deal, as a webinar for 10,000 people costs $9,000, which is almost a dollar per person.”

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