Prezi announces new features to add social media interactions to video meetings

Prezi announced new features today that allow enterprise users to bring content into their video feeds during live meetings on most video platforms, including Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Webex.

SEE: Research: Video conferencing tools and cloud-based solutions dominate digital workspaces; VPN and VDI less popular with SMBs (TechRepublic Premium)

The new features include the ability to:

• Toggle between View Modes to make it easy to highlight a key feature, data point or product demo video.
• Use the new side-panel-only mode to preview slides right next to the video conferencing app.
• Switch between Dark/Light modes based on OS settings to improve readability.

Jim Szafranski, chief executive officer, Prezi, said that companies will soon be looking for social media-level engagement in video meetings in the form of onscreen responses to allow attendees to engage the speaker without interrupting.

“We are seeing first-hand that letting participants drop GIFs, images, and typed responses into the video screen, leads to exponentially more feedback and engagement in video meetings,” he said. “Each team member can be responding onscreen 5-10 times per meeting, where maybe they previously spoke once per call.”   

He also predicts that companies will start to add logos and other branding elements to video meetings via the “lower third” of the screen, much like the crawl on news channels. 

“Think about how websites looked when the internet started, versus how they look now,” he said. “That’s how far the immersive virtual look of video meetings will take us.” 

He also thinks that making video meetings more interactive and less boring has the potential to erase the division created between in-person and remote workers. 

“In the hybrid office phase we are heading into, I think that employees can do a good job working from home by bringing their content into the video screen around them, making the idea that you are remote not constraining,” he said.

Prezi interviewed more than 1,000 hybrid office workers to inform the new user experience. Based on this feedback, the company identified these top five priorities among hybrid workers for making virtual meetings better: 

1. More immersive video meeting experiences/building personal connection 
2. Tools that are deeply integrated within existing workflows 
3. On-screen branding and presence for staff and sales video meetings 
4. Expanded ability for the audience to engage the speaker through visual and copy-driven responses
5. Ability to make any content or deck video-ready

SEE: The future of work: Tools and strategies for the digital workplace (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

The new UX is available on Prezi Video for Web, Mac and Windows. 

Prezi announced an integration with Google Slides in July. Prezi Video allows users to present videos, GIFs, presentations, images and type text on-screen of a live or recorded video. In addition to Google Meet, Prezi Video works with all major video streaming platforms. Prezi announced an integration with Google Workspace earlier this year. 

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