Zoom shares continued their two-day slide on Thursday after the company backtracked on a claim that it had 300 million users. The video-conferencing platform made the embarrassing admission in a quiet update to last week’s blog post where it had said that its user base has grown 50 percent to 300 million amid the coronavirus …
Zoom shares continued their two-day slide on Thursday after the company backtracked on a claim that it had 300 million users.
The video-conferencing platform made the embarrassing admission in a quiet update to last week’s blog post where it had said that its user base has grown 50 percent to 300 million amid the coronavirus outbreak.
In a clarification, Zoom said that instead of “300 million users,” it had actually meant to say “participants.” Whereas a user is an individual person using the platform who can only be counted once, a participant can take part in multiple meetings throughout the day and be counted several times.
“When we realized this error, we adjusted the wording to ‘participants,’” Zoom said in its correction. “This was a genuine oversight on our part.”
Zoom did not add a note to its blog admitting the error until it was contacted by The Verge, which first spotted the edit.
Last week’s announcement had sent Zoom’s stock soaring 12 percent. News of the reversal had the stock sinking 7 percent Thursday morning.
It arrives on the heels of a 6.5 percent slide Wednesday which was caused by Google announcing that it was making its Meet video-conference software for business free for all users.
Shares of Zoom were down 7.8 percent Thursday morning, at $135.10.
