Now with over 20M users, presentation startup Prezi adds long-awaited audio features

Zooming presentation startup Prezi has just crossed the 20-million-registered user mark. To celebrate the new milestone, it has added audio capabilities to presentations.

Prezi’s cloud-based software offers a respite from predictable PowerPoint presentations and offers lots of features such as professionally made templates and mobile editing. Notably, it added added 3D and fade-in animation tools last July. It zoomed past 10 million users in May 2012, so it is adding a million new users a month. For example, TED Conferences held this year have featured at least eight Prezi presentations.

“We’re entering a global idea economy,” Prezi CEO Peter Arvai said in a statement. “We rely on ideas to innovate in business and move society forward, and Prezi is giving people a more memorable and engaging way to share their ideas. Our new audio feature is just an added element to enhance storytelling, taking it beyond a purely visual journey to a full cinematic experience.”

The companies’ users have been asking for the ability to add audio elements to presentations for a long while. You can now add different sound files to each path point in the presentation. Ideally, you could add things like music, sound effects, or audio testimonials.

San Francisco-based Prezi has raised $14.2 million in funding to date from Accel Partners, Sunstone Capital, and others. It claims that 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies use its software and that the Prezi iPad app has bene downloaded nearly 2 million times.

Screenshot via Prezi/YouTube