Zoom Website Traffic Jumps 15% Since Coronavirus Outbreak, Social VR Usage So Far Seems Flat

It's news that probably won't surprise the many millions now working from home since the last few weeks, but here it is: Traffic to the website of Zoom, the remote conferencing services company, has strongly jumped since the end of January, when the WHO first declared the Coronavirus to be an international health concern. According to SimilarWeb, traffic jumped to about 14 million visits total at the end of February, representing 15% in growth. Curiously, the competing service Skype has seen a slight decline in web traffic over the same time. My interpretation: Since Skype is a much older service (founded in 2003, versus Zoom in 2011), most active Internet users already have Skype, and are visiting Zoom for the first time to download the client as they prepare to do remote work.

At New World Notes, we've been wondering if we'd also see a rise in online virtual world/social VR activity. But so far, not so much. Take a look:

Source: SteamDB

On Steam, at least, the major social VR platforms aren't seeing any significant spike in growth. One possible reason: The industry leaders, VRChat and Rec Room, have a userbase that tends to skew to teens and early 20s, an age range that's generally taking the virus much less seriously. 

However, it's still (sadly) very early days for the outbreak, and we may see these usage patterns change as more cities and countries impose a curfew. (Indeed, as Italy went into curfew, usage of Fortnite went through the roof.)

Then again, maybe people practicing social distancing may prefer to play games, rather than hang out in a virtual world, where people largely gather to hang out and chat with others. Because while many will want to play games to forget about their troubles, chatting is yet another chance to talk about... the coronavirus.

Comments

[Anonymous]

VRChat peaked users over the weekend but who’s counting

[Wagner James Au]

Not sure what you mean by "peaked", according to Steam DB it peaked at 34K concurrent Steam users last July. Weekly peaks have been around 11-13K since then.

[camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra]

This coming weekend promises to exacerbate the problem(?) of coronavirus failing to push an uptick in social VR: on 20th March they'll be releasing a new Animal Crossing game and a new Doom FPS that have been hotly anticipated for weeks (to the point where their entirely disparate fandoms have started posting love odes to each other, a peculiar data point in a gaming scene where opinions on what is good and what is terrible have generally been polarised heavily.). Several major musical acts around the world have been (2d video) livestreaming their performances such as Dropkick Murphys and the Melbourne Orchestra, with all indications that they will certainly not be the last.

[sirhc desantis]

When you say SocialVR aren't the ones you highlight there sort of a bit based around the headset thing that no one has been able to actually buy for a while because.... ? So perhaps looking for a spike in people who might have decided some time ago that it wasn't for them.

(In comparison, and taking in to account the notorious retention rate, sl signups for Sunday 15th were roughly 21000 (may be a few +/- there). )