Zoom is looking to take on the top dogs in the corporate messaging space with a rebranding of its own messaging platform.
Zoom became a household name as a result of the pandemic, expanding far beyond its enterprise roots. As the pandemic has waned, the company has been looking to build on its success and use that to gain a bigger share of the business communication market. Part of that plan is positioning itself as a video communications platform rather than just a video app.
The latest step in that direction is renaming its separate collaboration platform from Zoom Chat to Zoom Teams Chat. The name better reflects the company’s ambitions, as well as distinguishes the platform’s chat and collaboration features compared to the chat features available in the standard Zoom app.
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“We used to call it Zoom Chat,” explains Janine Pelosi, Chief Marketing Officer. “As of today, we are officially renaming it Zoom Team Chat, to usher in the future of persistent messaging and further enhance teamwork and collaboration. We’ve already made significant investments in Zoom Team Chat’s capabilities, and we’ll unveil even more enhancements later this month.
“Chat is the backbone of collaboration in today’s hybrid and flexible work environments. It’s where teams track projects, build culture, and instantly and asynchronously collaborate. It’s where teams begin and end their workdays. And it’s more ingrained in our day-to-day than ever.”
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It’s clear from the description of the service that Zoom is targeting Slack and Microsoft Teams, hoping to leverage the success it has had over the past two years.
“Team Chat brings together messaging, file sharing, third-party integrations, video, voice, and whiteboard in one place to simplify how you collaborate,” Pelosi adds. “When you need to elevate a chat conversation to a phone or video call or share an idea via whiteboard, you can do so at the touch of a button right in Zoom Team Chat.
“Additionally, Team Chat is a valuable external communication tool. It provides a seamless and secure communication experience for external contacts, including consultants, vendors, clients, and more. A notice in the chat or channel “compose” message box even identifies when an external user is present.”
Only time will tell if Zoom is able to compete successfully against Slack and Microsoft, but the company certainly has momentum and branding on its side.