Skift Take
Another day, and another virtual event platform is closing down. This time it’s communications giant Verizon that is giving up on virtual events.
BlueJeans by Verizon announced in a mass email to users that it will be sunsetting its suite of BlueJeans products. The company says it has made this decision due to the changing market landscape. 9to5Google first reported the news.
BlueJeans by Verizon was founded in 2009 by Krish Ramakrishnan and Alagu Periyannan. It launched its commercial service in 2011 after taking on $23.5 million in venture capital. Verizon acquired the company in May 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic, for around $400 million. The company had more than 15,000 customers and 390 employees at the time.
It’s unclear if the more than 500 staff members across its six offices will be laid off or absorbed into the parent company.
The BlueJeans suite revolves around a video conferencing platform that can power webinars as well as virtual and hybrid events. The company added a virtual production studio, BlueJeans Studio, to its offering in January 2022. Just this March, it added a free tier version of the tool, BlueJeans Basic, presumably to compete with Zoom’s free offering. This will be the first product to be discontinued, shutting down at the end of August.
BlueJeans is not a household name in virtual events, but it shows that corporate America has little hope for this product category.
