Videoconference app Zoom drawing more competition

The world has gone wild for virtual meetings, and Zoom videoconferencing is gaining competitors fast.

A new Zoom competitor — RingCentral, a business communications company — is coming out with a new version this month.

Recently, we tried another Zoom alternative — the free UberConference.com, which has nothing to do with Uber, the ride-hailing company. There’s a Business version for $15. It allows more participants per conference and other features.

Joy’s women’s club recently chose UberConference for their meetings for two reasons. First, participants don’t have to download anything. Second, some people are annoyed by Zoom’s privacy policy. Zoom collects users’ phone numbers, email addresses, Facebook profiles, info about your use of Zoom and the device and networks you’re using. They also get information from third parties who know things about you. And they gather information about anything you upload to your Zoom meetings. UberConference doesn’t appear to collect anything besides your name, billing address and home or office address (if you’re a user of the Business version), but their legal page is dense.

For us, the privacy issue wouldn’t be enough of a reason to prefer UberConference over Zoom. Companies collect data to bring us relevant ads. But UberConference may lead to fewer technical snafus. In one of our Zoom meetings, the first 45 minutes was wasted by tech talk. For example, one woman said she couldn’t see her own face though everyone else could see her. When it couldn’t be fixed, she kept bringing it up until Joy said “Let’s move on.”

UberConference works best in the Chrome Web browser. Or you can download the app. With the app we