Millions of Britons turn to video apps to keep in touch

VIDEO conferencing tools have boomed in popularity since social distancing forced millions of Britons to find alternative ways to stay in touch with friends and family.

Apps that can be used to video chat dominated the download charts over the weekend and Zoom, one of the most popular, suffered problems on Monday morning as usage surged.

Houseparty, a social networking app, lets users chat and play games over video and last week received two million downloads globally. It has since soared to the top of the Apple App store in the UK.

Zoom, a Californian company, has a free app that allows up to 100 people to join an online meeting. The spread of the virus has seen the company remove a 40-minute cap on free accounts in the US, and proved popular among families as well as global businesses.

Eric Yuan, founder of Zoom, told The Telegraph last week that “coronavirus has completely changed how people think about where or how you should work”, as analysts estimate that the company made up for half of all mobile downloads in the sector last month.

But there have been some concerns over the stability of the apps. Earlier this month, Microsoft’s Teams app crashed for two hours in Europe after millions logged in to start working remotely. Concerns have also been raised that older citizens lacking digital literacy risk being left out as critical services go online amid the global coronavirus pandemic.