Zoom could be coming to a lot more apps and services, from gaming to retailers, as the company has made it easier for developers to integrate its video conferencing tech into other software.
This comes courtesy of a new Zoom software development kit (SDK), which opens up Zoom's proprietary video and audio services for embedding into other apps and software. So you can expect Zoom to pop up in a load of new places before too long; hopefully, you won't be suffering from Zoom fatigue just yet.
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Developers can sign-up and receive a monthly 10,000 minutes for free. If you're in the software-making world and need more, then an annual plan costs $1,000, unlocking 30,000 minutes per month, wherein it becomes $0.003 per minute if a user exceeds the packaged amount.
Zoom already has a strong lineage in building great user-experiences: its app is seamless to set up, plus recent upgrades like the ability to turn on live captions have made it a lot easier to use.
But the new SDK loos targeted at making Zoom feel seamless to use on other software and apps. For example, you could be using a mobile gaming app with a multiplayer mode, and with a few taps enter a video call with the people you're playing with. Or Zoom video calls could be integrated into social apps that have been text message-based so far.
Zoom has also announced a central developer portal, which lets developers capitalize on the video platform’s collective expertise. So if you're a software developer, or have started learning how to code, then you can use the portal to take a crack at coding Zoom features into other software, while being able to fall back on Zoom’s wealth of knowledge for guidance.
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic forcing people to work from home and stay inside more often, Zoom has seen a surge in growth. And that's lead to it getting more features, such as the ability to change your appearance in real-time and escape boring Zoom calls.
However, some people have had enough of Zoom, so we've got a selection of the best Zoom alternatives for video calling.
More: Zoom fatigue is real — try these four tips to fight it
