Zoom launches its Zapps app store, dedicated to third-party app developers: already 35 companies on board including Slack, DropBox and Coursera
Zoom opens the doors to third-party apps with Zapps, a virtual space completely dedicated to developers dedicated to selling their creations. It will be a real marketplace, with specific and interesting peculiarities that will allow it to completely distinguish itself from the existing store.
To speak openly about the decision was the CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, during Zoomtopia, the event dedicated to the platform that ended a few hours ago and that this year was held in virtual form because of the Covid-19 pandemic that is affecting the whole world. In his keynote, Yuan said, "Zoom has become more than just a video communication platform. It is a people-centric platform. Zoom has become something you do." And, albeit indirectly, it was pandemic that pushed more and more users onto the platform, using it in the past months as well as even now for distance education, calls and meetings with work colleagues.
Zoom: what is Zapps and how it works
There are already 35 companies that will use Zapps to integrate their content with that of the platform. Among the most important names that have already confirmed their presence are Slack, an app used for communication in work environments, Asana, one of the leading names in workgroup management apps, and the platform dedicated to distance education Coursera.
Zapps is not the first space dedicated to third-party apps from the Californian company. In fact, the platform can already count on a marketplace, stocked with more than 800 apps that integrate Zoom as a conference call system. For the new virtual place for developers, however, the discourse is different: it is in fact all the opposite, that is, applications that become an integral part of the main and which can be accessed with a single click.
As already announced, from the new Zapps marketplace will be possible to download many applications, some of which free and some paid. In addition, at least for the first time, the platform will be completely free for developers who decide to use it; for the future, however, the situation may change even if for the moment there is no certain information about it.
Zoom: with Zapps coming also OnZoom
Of a different mold is OnZoom, the other novelty introduced in the same keynote and that will serve as a collector of events that for the management, organization and sale of conference tickets. To be able to organize events will be individuals, professionals and companies as well as non-profit organizations for fundraising. As anticipated by Wei Li, Head of Platform and Artificial Intelligence at Zoom, this new creature will first be launched in beta version in the United States and, later, will be made available for the rest of the world.