Video platform Zoom on Thursday announced new updates and features in its app ecosystem to foster collaboration and creativity in virtual meetings. The video conferencing platform announced in a blog post that metaverse-like features will be coming to Zoom through its new visual workspace, Welo.
Welo is a visual workspace application that allows users to virtually recreate physical collaboration spaces, including real rooms. Everyone is represented in the space, allowing participants to see each other and move between conversations naturally as they would in person. To do this, users can simply command their Welo avatar to approach another group of colleagues.
Participants can use Welo’s built-in facilitation capabilities and embed key information resources in rooms so everyone can easily access them and make meetings run smoothly. Teams can leverage built-in experiences to address common challenges.
Welo also incorporates meeting rooms, a feature for smaller, more focused discussions. Meeting participants can Meeting participants can move from one meeting room to another in a natural way. Conversations can be broadcast to individuals or to the entire group.
The new metaverse-like feature also consists of out-of-the-box collaboration tools. These include the ability to embed agendas, instructions and links in breakout rooms, as well as integration with tools such as Miro and Google Docs for real-time collaboration in the same window.
The Welo application is currently in beta testing, with full functionality available at a later date. With Zoom’s rollout of metaverse features in online meeting spaces, the platform is set to compete with Microsoft Mesh for Teams, a collaboration and communications platform announced in November 2021.
Mesh, currently available in a limited preview release, is accessible through mixed reality apps and VR headsets. It allows users to connect with each other through a holographic presence from different locations around the world.
Last year, Facebook also announced its Horizons Workrooms, a metaverse workspace for VR collaboration. While both Horizons Workrooms and Microsoft Mesh require VR headsets to access the platforms, Zoom’s Welo does not.
Unlike Zoom, Microsoft and Meta, Google has not yet integrated metaverse capabilities into its video conferencing platform, Google Meet. However, Google is developing its own AR/VR headset, indicating that it has plans to enter the metaverse.
