Speed is a feature

It’s easy to think of Zoom’s simplicity as a competitive advantage, but this kind of simplicity is actually hard to implement in practice. Customers request endless features while competitors emerge with a longer list of functionality. Yet I observe that it’s a distinctive quality of networked products that they often do one thing well.

Speed is a critical element of the zone experience. “I play really fast,” a middle-aged tax accountant named Shelly told me. “I don’t like to wait, I want to know what’s gonna come out. If a machine is slow, I move to a faster one.”