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Zoom Video Communications recently experienced an outage as more people are now using the video conferencing service to work from home or for distance learning.

Zoom users on the East Coast of the US and in parts of Europe reported seeing error messages while attempting to log in to the company's web client on Friday morning. The outage also affected parts of California, Florida and the Midwest as well as Malaysia.

At the time of the outage, Zoom's status page said that its web client was “under maintenance”. On its developer forum page though, the company tried to reassure users, saying:

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"During these tough times, we are seeing a massive increase in demand for our services. To continue serving our incredible services to our customers and developers, we may be making changes rapidly."

When Zoom's web client briefly went down, the company advised users to download and install its desktop application instead until the issues were resolved.

Surge in video conferencing

Since the coronavirus outbreak began, businesses as well as consumers have turned to video conferencing software to work remotely as well as to stay in touch with friends and family. In fact, video conferencing apps saw record downloads on both Apple's App Store and on the Google Play Store in mid-march.

Although there are loads of video conferencing apps and services to choose from, Zoom Video Communications quickly became a favorite during the outbreak due to its ease of use and compatibility across devices and browsers.

However, a number of privacy issues were recently discovered in the company's software including how the service was sending data to Facebook (which was later fixed) and the fact that its video calls don't actually use end-to-end encryption. Zoom's CEO Eric S. Yuan has since apologized for major security vulnerabilities and promised to do better going forward.

As lockdown measures around the world are still in place and employees and students are now working from home, Zoom and other video conferencing services could likely see more outages in the future due to increased demand during this trying time.

• Also check out our complete list of the best video conferencing software

Via CRN

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted daily life around the world and the WHO recently warned that an overabundance of information about the virus makes it difficult for people to differentiate between legitimate news and misleading information.

At the same time, EU security services have warned that Russia is aggressively exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to push disinformation and weaken Western society through its bot army.

The cybersecurity firm Radware has been using its bot manager to monitor internet traffic in an attempt to track the “infodemic” that both the WHO and EU security services have issued warnings on. According to its data, bots have upped their game and organizations in the social media, ecommerce and digital publishing industries have experienced a surge in bad bot traffic following the coronavirus outbreak.

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The bots have been found to be executing various insidious activities including spreading disinformation, spam commenting and more. Radware also discovered that in February, 58.1 percent of bots had the capability to mimic human behavior. This means that they can disguise their identities, create fake accounts on social media sites and post their masters' propaganda while appearing as a genuine user.

Scraping content

Radware's research suggests that cybercriminals are targeting media and digital publishing sites in order to scrape their unique content. This content is then published on malware-ridden websites to try and scam visitors looking for the latest news on the coronavirus.

In fact, 27.7 percent of traffic on media sites in February was from bad bots carrying out automated activity, including scraping content. Ecommerce websites have also seen an increase in bot activity and during the same time period, 31.3 percent of their traffic was made up of bad bots.

In a blog post revealing its findings, senior content marketer for Radware's product marketing team, Manwendra Mishra explained how bots will continue to contribute to misinformation about the coronavirus, saying:

“As the coronavirus threat intensifies, bots will drive the infodemic much further, continuing to be an efficient tool for cybercriminals, nation-state actors, and conspiracy theorists alike. The impact of information — true or false — especially in times of fear, uncertainty and confusion is greater. Because communication channels are diverse, authorities have very little control of bot activity. In the coming months, we expect the use of bots to accelerate due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the US presidential election.”

• We've also highlighted the best antivirus software

Amazon Prime Day 2020 is looming once again, and it's the event that will get people looking to the big savings ahead of Black Friday 2020. However, due to the effect of the coronavirus pandemic, it looks like the Prime Day date could be moved this year.

When it does land, we're expecting to see another raft of discounts for Amazon's own-brand Echo speakers and smart displays, Fire Sticks for the TV and Fire tablets, and a widening of savings on its smart home wares – like the Ring camera.

Last year we saw some savings that weren't even beaten on Black Friday later in the year, and even found a few bargains on Apple products like the Apple Watch, or Garmin fitness trackers too.

If you're not aware, Prime Day is the time to get some big savings at the online retailer, with thousands of products discounted over the period – provided you're signed up to Amazon Prime.

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Last year Prime members were snapping up products throughout the 48-hour event with over 175 million items sold. 

That's more than Amazon sold on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. That's a massive increase from an already impressive 100 million products sold during the previous Prime Day sale, which was admittedly a shorter event at 36 hours – but it shows the sales period is becoming recognised as a key time to save money.

When is Amazon Prime Day 2020?

'So, when is Prime Day 2020 going to be?' is the currently-key question on the lips of every consumer looking to save money on Amazon's own products this year – according to Reuters, Amazon Prime Day is now going to be in August at the earliest.

This moves it from its traditional July timeslot, and although the brand hasn't confirmed the date for this year it's never been pushed back beyond that month in a bid to improve sales during that time – and it's previously worked well.

Depending on the impact of the virus, Amazon Prime Day 2020 will now be a little later in the year – which will have an impact on the savings offered, although how that will manifest is currently unclear.

It could see shoppers offered even wilder discounts to clear the stocks, or it could mean that third party sellers don't have the same savings in place as we move closer to Black Friday.

How long will Prime Day 2020 last?

Well, it's hard to say with any degree of certainty, and in light of the recent rumours of Prime Day 2020 moving back in the year it could be even longer than expected.

Prime Day a few years ago was only that, a day, but in 2018 it moved to 36 hours, and last year was a full two days.

We're fully expecting Amazon to move to a Prime Week any year now, and with a rumoured $100 million worth of devices that will need to be shifted thanks to the delay, it could well be this year.

We can't see Amazon reducing the amount of time Prime Day lasts for, so expect Prime Day 2020 to last at least 48 hours this year, if not longer.

What is Amazon Prime Day 2020?

Amazon Prime Day is a summer sales event on Amazon websites around the world where members of Amazon Prime get exclusive discounts on a wide range of items. 

It's not just Amazon-branded items either (although they're among the most-bought every year), lots of other manufacturers and third-party merchants save their best deals for Prime Day too, knowing millions of extra shoppers will be hitting the online store.

Why does Amazon have Prime Day? It's presented as a neat "thank you" to its paying members, but one that involves giving Amazon more money and shifting a lot of product at the same time.

You need to either sign up for a free trial or be an existing member of Amazon Prime, paying for the privilege of free, swift delivery (although that's currently being slowed down to make space for the essential items people are ordering, with the sign at the top of the site saying 'Delivery times for some items may take longer than normal') and is paid for monthly or yearly.

And it's no coincidence the best deals are found on Amazon's items. Buy a Kindle and you're going to keep buying ebooks from Amazon. 

Buy a Fire TV Stick you're going to watch Prime Video (a great perk of membership) and maybe pay for the odd rental. Buy an Echo smart speaker and you're into the Alexa family and helping Amazon fight off competition from rival Google's Home devices.

How competitive were Prime Day deals at Amazon last year?

A price monitoring company called Minderest (as reported by PR Newswire) compared prices of 566 of the most in-demand products over Prime Day to see how they stacked up against rivals stores listed on Google Shopping. 

58.05% of them were cheapest on Amazon UK, compared to a massive 81.9% in the US where Amazon is annihilating the competition on a regular basis. 

If anything, that UK figure is a testament to how competitive the UK market it is and we did notice other stores having big sales of their own around Prime Day and a lot of price matching happening too. 

It's also a solid reminder to double check prices elsewhere on Prime Day (we always do this before highlighting a deal for you) as you might get a better deal from the likes of John Lewis, Currys and Argos.

Amazon devices, as expected, got the best deals with an average 45% reduction on their RRPs compared to 37% in 2018. According to audience research from Numerator, 65.8% of surveyed shoppers said they were extremely or very satisfied with the deals available.

What were people searching for on Amazon Prime Day?

Analytics experts Hitwise tracked down the data for what people were pumping into Amazon's search bar. Nintendo Switch was the winner with over a million searches in the UK – a shame that the Switch deals weren't actually that good for a second year running though. 

'Laptops' was close behind (905k) and Prime Day was actually great for picking up a great deal there. 'Fitbit' was the next biggest item with close to 600k searches and multiple versions of the trackers/smartwatches were on offer for those searchers. 

Elsewhere, the top ten searched items were rounded out by Audible, PS4, Kindle, Fire Stick, Alexa, Echo Dot and Lego. 

Overall though, interest in tech and gadgets seems to once again have been the driving force behind most peoples' visit to Amazon for Prime Day.

What products sold the most on Prime Day?

But what actually sold well. Amazon's own devices absolutely dominated the top ten here with the Fire TV Stick coming out on top and the Echo Dot not far behind. Both had the cheapest prices we'd ever seen. 

The Kindle Paperwhite had a great day too. The Echo Show 5 was only released a few weeks before, but a £20 discount made it a fantastic deal for a smart speaker with a screen with a price that made it much better value than the older Echo Spot and larger Echo Show screens.

The PlayStation Classic may have disappointed many at launch with its selection of installed games, but a super low price on Prime Day inspired plenty of "why, the hell not" purchases for fans of Sony's early steps into gaming. A Neos Smart Cam was another surprise inclusion in the top ten.

The best Amazon Prime Day deals of 2019

While we're ages away from Amazon Prime Day 2020, it certainly doesn't hurt to take a look at what the best deals were in 2019's summer event. Naturally, these prices are long gone now, but these are the sort of bargains you should expect to see in 2020.

We expect to similar offers around Black Friday for sure too, although the all-time lowest prices on many of Amazon's own devices are usually saved for Prime Day to be honest. But we're only talking small amounts really.

What did Amazon's rivals do on Prime Day?

Currys kicked of its 'Black Tag' event before Prime Day and it was still going for a few days afterwards too. Out of all the other stores, we'd probably say Currys gave Amazon the biggest fight for TVs, laptops and gadgets. Currys' wide selection of home white goods beat out Amazon too, although Amazon has never really focused on those as much.

John Lewis was very popular for Google Home products (not sold on Amazon) and while it was generally price-matching rivals rather than coming up with its own deals, we were happy to send you its way due to most items coming with a free minimum two-year warranty at no extra cost. Having to pay for delivery on items under £50 was a bit off-putting though on cheaper items and shows a key area where John Lewis are lagging behind the times a little on the UK online retailscape.

So much shopping is done on mobile now either via a browser, or by using a retailer's own app. According to AppsFlyer (as reported by PerformanceIn), the top 100 retail apps took a bit of a beating during Prime Day, not only were new installs down, 53% of them had a decrease of in-app purchases. 

And seeing as Amazon's app got through the sale without freezing all the time like it did last year, it's not great news for rival apps.

Overall, more people shopped via mobile at Amazon than ever before on Prime Day. Gone are the days when people tended to browse more on mobile, then fire up the laptop when they got home to actually finish the transaction. And to be fair, on Prime Day, you can't really afford to wait that long due to the risk of deals selling out.

Did Amazon get many new Prime members on the day?

It certainly did. According to Hitwise an additional 80 thousand new Prime customers signed up to Prime each day during the sale, that's a 147% increase year on year.

What we don't know though is what type of membership they signed up for. If they'd never been a Prime Member before they could have signed up for a 30-day free trial, or maybe they dived into a full year via the temporary £59 offer, saving £20 on the regular annual fee.

Amazon will be hoping those free trial signups don't cancel though once the 30 days are up. And with the Prime Video streaming service, free delivery, exclusive discounts free ebooks and many other perks available for members, there's certainly plenty of reason to stick with it.

Did anything go wrong on Prime Day 2019?

Actually, yes. The UK start at midnight was a complete flop. Amazon's site didn't crash or anything like that, but the deal prices that were supposed to go live as soon as the sale started simply didn't. 

So despite us, and the rest of the informed media, prepping a huge amount of content to launch around midnight to tell you about the best deals of the sale, we were left scratching our heads as all the old prices were still showing.

It took until around 4am for the proper prices to come through, which was a massive disappointment to any keen shoppers who wanted to dive into the sale before heading to bed. It was a seriously poor start from Amazon and we're still shaking our heads in disappointment. You have to hope it'll up its game for Black Friday.

If you decided to wait until the morning to check out the Prime Day deals then thing's were running much more smoothly. We didn't experience any other technical problems on Amazon's site or with the mobile app for the rest of the sale either.