Recently we heard two exciting bits of news that we are thrilled to share.
Prezi now has 50 million users………..Wow!
And they have just secured $57 Million dollars worth of investment to help grow the product even more……….Cha ching!
But what could this actually mean for its existing users, newbies, and more importantly for presentations in general?
We are going nowhere
In the last few years of being a Prezi trainer, designer and author I have encountered huge groups of people that were convinced Prezi wouldn’t last, and that everyone would run back to their PowerPoint decks before long.
This news is a really clear indication that Prezi is definitely here to stay. Personally I can’t believe anyone ever doubted it, but as with any new piece of technology there are always going to be early adopters and those who just refuse that change is possible or beneficial.
Prezi has only been going since 2009, so to get so many users in just 5 years is a clear sign that people want this change. They want better presentations, and Prezi (when used well) definitely delivers the goods.
Still some way to go
The recent news is a fantastic achievement and it will definitely help encourage a lot more curious newbies to come on board and ditch slides. It is important though to point out that powerPoint obviously does still have the market share.
Prezi has only been around since 2009 so the fact that it has seen such steady growth is outstanding. I’m confident that the number of users will match (if not exceed) it’s main rival within the next 10 years.
Show me the monaaaayyyy!
so what will Prezi do with the $57 Million investment?
Well if it was me I’d start by projecting the Prezi logo onto the moon for the whole world to see!
It is of course going to be used for much more sensible things. One very obvious area is that the software itself will improve, and probably (hopefully) much quicker than we might have seen in the past. We can’t really speculate on how the investment will be used but there is no doubt at all in my mind that within the next 12 months we’ll see a lot of improvements, new features, and hopefully we’ll finally get an Android app (please Prezi we’ve waited so long!)
So how does the future look
The chances of seeing a Prezi presentation at conferences and events is now greater than ever. More users means more exposure, which of course should lead to even more users.
What we have to be very careful of though is delivering bad Prezis that don’t do the software justice. There are lots of these Death by Prezi examples out there and they are easily avoided by following some simple steps which you can read more about here.
Apart from the obvious dangers mentioned above (which ppt also suffers with) the future of presentations is a very exciting one. You will start to see more and more great looking Prezis being delivered by people who fully understand how to tell a great story and think beyond slides. This is the key to being a great prezenter in my humble opinion.
To read more on this from Prezi themselves go to http://blog.prezi.com/latest/thanks-a-million
And to see the announcement being given live by Peter Arvai (twitter.com/peterarvai) play the video below
So congratulations to Prezi, and here’s to another exciting 5 years.
Russell – The Prezenter
