Zoom crashes on 1st day of school for many districts

Zoom experiences a major platform outage right as students and teachers gear up to begin virtual learning.

Aug 24, 2020

ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO - AUGUST 17: A Zoom meeting for an 'Introduction to Psychology' course is displayed on a laptop as classes begin amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on the first day of the fall 2020 semester at the University of New Mexico on August 17, 2020 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The course will meet in person four times during the fall semester with the remaining classes and coursework completed online. To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, the university has moved to a hybrid instruction model that includes a mixture of in-person and remote classes. According to the school, about 70 percent of classes are being taught online. (Photo by Sam Wasson/Getty Images)

As school districts across the country began their first semester of virtual learning using the digital conferencing platform Zoom, users experienced widespread technical difficulties.

According to CNBC, the company first reported the “partial outages” around 9 a.m. ET on Monday. Although Zoom itself did not initially share the technical difficulties on social media, users took to Twitter to share their confusion when the app did not function properly.

Downdetector, a platform that reports service outages, confirmed the issues on Twitter. On its official website, the tech-tracker details a peek of user-reported issues at 10:00 a.m. ET.

User reports indicate Zoom is having problems since 8:09 AM EDT. https://t.co/cKwKRhjLkE RT if you're also having problems #zoomdown
— Downdetector (@downdetector) August 24, 2020

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 many once in-person occasions turned to the platform for digital events. Education is one of the many industries which shifted to include more virtual engagement as opposed to face-to-face classrooms. The temporary Zoom outage hindered the first day of school for students across the country.

WFAA ABC8 reports at least four districts across Northern-Texas were impacted. In Atlanta, Superintendent Lisa Herring said that the outage created “an interesting start” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

By 9:50 a.m. ET, Zoom announced that the problem was identified and a solution was in progress.

“We have identified the issue causing users to be unable to authenticate to the Zoom website (zoom.us) and unable to start and join Zoom Meetings and Webinars, and we are working on a fix for this issue,” the company said on its website.

By 1:00 p.m. ET, Zoom assured users the disruptions were resolved.

Everything should be working properly now! We are continuing to monitor the situation. Thank you all for your patience and our sincere apologies for disrupting your day.
— Zoom (@Zoom) August 24, 2020

“Everything should be working properly now!’ the company shared on Twitter.

Eric S. Yuan, CEO and founder of Zoom, issued a personal apology from his own Twitter account.

Today @zoom_us had a service disruption that affected many of our customers. We know the responsibility we have to keep your meetings, classrooms & important events running. I’m personally very sorry & we will all do our best to prevent this from happening in the future.
— Eric S. Yuan (he / him / his) (@ericsyuan) August 24, 2020

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