Discord Looks To Grow Beyond Its Gaming Roots (axios.com) 52
Discord began in 2015 as a way for gamers to talk to one another before, during, and after play. Now, the chat company is pursuing a far broader vision: to be the Slack for your non-work life. From a report: Discord allows people to create their own online community space, to set and enforce rules and decide whether to remain invite-only or open it to the public. Users can share messages in various channels, chat privately and have group discussions. More recently, the company has added group video chat. Discord calls each community's space a "server," but it's not a server in the sense of a separate computer controlled by the user. Users can run servers without needing system-administrator knowhow. [...] Citron said Discord is trying to enable online social spaces that can serve different functions. In the real world, an auditorium looks quite different from a classroom from a coffee shop, with each design offering cues to how the space is used. Discord, which has more than 100 million monthly active users, is trying to create similar types of spaces online.
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One Discord staff member was at the center of a controversy when he said the platform didn't allow loli/shota porn but cub (underage furries) was perfectly kosher. That's really all you need to know.
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https://www.newsweek.com/disco... [newsweek.com]
Translation: Not profitable yet (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess with 250+ million users [wikipedia.org] they are still trying to figure out step 2:
1. Give away new chat service
2. ???
3. Profit
Why do all these chat programs keep re-inventing IRC? /s
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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It was more like :
1. Re-invent IRC, bundle in Mumble/Teamspeak/ type Audio capabilities
2. Market heavily to under 20 kids who won't realise you're just re-inventing the wheel, and call it for "gamers" because that's cool.
3. Realise that under-20s have no money yet
4. Profit ???
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Wouldn't be the first application to first build a large user base, and then find a way to monetize it (probably get gobbled up). It is a very well known brand and it already is widely used as slack-for-personal-life. They may want to make it more accessible to more people, which appears to be exactly what they're about to do.
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I think it was kinda like:
1. Wait microsoft to make skype even worse
2. Offer the only choice at the time that wasn't tied to a payment or mandatory mobile tie in
3. Enjoy all the people fleeing the sinking ship for the platform with less friction.
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It was more like :
1. Re-invent IRC, bundle in Mumble/Teamspeak/ type Audio capabilities 2. Market heavily to under 20 kids who won't realise you're just re-inventing the wheel, and call it for "gamers" because that's cool. 3. Realise that under-20s have no money yet 4. Profit ???
Discord seems like they're trying to take on Slack more than any other product.
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I feel like people on Slashdot often complain every chat service is just re-inventing IRC. But adding voice/video chat that works in a web browser is legitimately a useful feature for a chat room system. And, they're silly, but people like emojis.
What would you propose as an alternative? Mumble [wikipedia.org] and Matrix [wikipedia.org] look like the closest alternatives I can find.
Mumble does not look user-friendly enough that I would be comfortable recommending it to non-techies. Among other problems, it doesn't appear to have a web int
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I feel like people on Slashdot often complain every chat service is just re-inventing IRC.
It isn't a complaint. Merely an observation, underlining that Discord is one a large number of apps who succeed because of their superior quality of implementation rather than their originality of concept, or because they address a true need.
Re:Translation: Not profitable [or friendly] yet (Score:2)
Based on my experiences a few months ago, I think your Step 2 should be "Sow discord", per the name. Titles tend to be aspirational or predictive?
The atmosphere of Discord quickly reminded me of Reddit. Very cliquish with lots of secret rules and quick punting of newbies. I don't think my "fearsome reputation" could have preceded me--at least there wasn't any comment to suggest that I'd been "recognized"--but my sincerely ignorant and intentionally innocent questions were not met kindly. I selected a couple
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Literally everything Discord does, MSN Messenger did better, but MS in all their wisdom killed it and went for Skype instead and killed that.
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IRC is free
How much do a logging bot, a link summary bot, and an attachment host cost?
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I'm fine with Telegram. Market = saturated (Score:1)
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I'll be teaching in discord this semester after trying out last semester when we switched online.
It works well.
Many students already know it.
It supports easily sub rooms.
It is always up which gives student a place to discuss out of class time without having to synchronize point to point.
Text channels are easily created to account for different discussions.
It is pretty good. There are probably other tools. But this one works.
Then knock it off with the woke shit (Score:2, Insightful)
For those unaware, Discord started as a "gamer voice platform" because it could run completely in a browser, meaning you could just throw open another tab in the browser you were probably running anyway and not waste too many extra resources on voice chat that could run while you were playing video games. People could send out temporary voice chat links and you'd be chatting in voice chat without needing an account or anything. Great for online gaming.
They've since spun it out into effectively Slack, comple
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The woke shit is even more hilarious when you remember that Discord claims that cub porn is perfectly fine on Discord. What's cub porn, you hopefully ask? Well, it's furry porn, but with minors. So basically pedophilia, but for furries. Perfectly fine on Discord.
Today's Episode of "What I learned today that I really wish I hadn't."
Seriously, somebody hit the reset button. We've taken this run as far as it needs to go. Maybe next time we'll do better.
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If the GP is right, he or she should be able to post evidence that Discord has been notified of such porn and refused to remove it. I doubt he can.
Even if he doesn't, I will: https://www.newsweek.com/disco... [newsweek.com]
There is no corporation on Earth that's "perfectly fine" with pedophilia,
Hollywood.
Me no like Discord (Score:4, Informative)
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The main reason I dislike Discord though, is that it's often misused as a documentation and support site rather than a community chat. A lot of game modding communities moved over to Discord, and the result is kind of like... taking a message board, rolling up all the topics into a single huge thread, one per subforum, a
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I have no problem with people chatting. Please, enjoy your peers and chirp about your breakfast and your ex and that movie you watched.
Why the hell is it in the same single-stream heap as documentation, creating a signal:noise that makes 4chan look like wikipedia?
Discord is a good chat board. Discord is a shitty message board. Don't shove the former into being your latter.
I don't have data on discord, but I'm fairly sure my slightly-aged work-issued machine (MBP) used to choke on Slack pretty roughly. It wa
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It's Chrome. The Discord client is just Chrome. (Specifically it's Electron [electronjs.org], a platform for making "desktop applications" that run off an embedded Chromium instance.)
Because it's just Chrome, it's a full web browser, meaning that the client is all HTML and JavaScript. (And because it's just Chrome, you can use Ctrl-Shift-I inside of it to bring up the Chrome Developer Tools, which they left enabled.)
You may be able to make it run somewhat more smoothly by turning off Hardware Acceleration. (I have to do thi
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Dropping this here...
https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless#cordless
Took about 10seconds to search.
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As that page itself warns, third party clients are against the terms of service, and can get your account banned.
They probably won't ban your account for using that, but - well - only probably. If you trip their bot detection algorithm and are caught using a third party client, you can kiss your account goodbye.
Lucy in the Sky with Discussions! (Score:2)
Actually it's pie in the sky that I'm discussing here. What sort of discussion system would I like to find? Kudos and Internet points to anyone kind enough to point me at the URL of such. (Just checked out Vero and already eliminated it.)
Friendly discussions of topics of interest. Humor encouraged, trolls and liars discouraged (or at least rendered less visible). Easy to find and even keep tabs on people who are well informed on problems or issues I'm trying to study, but I'm not seeking celebrities, author
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More reflection on the why. If I'm not trying to learn something, then at least I'm trying to clarify my own thinking on the topic. Often reflecting upon something I've just read.
Slack (Score:2)
Community Manager Point of View (Score:5, Insightful)
For some crazy reason, which I believe was all my friends stepping backwards when they asked volunteers to step forwards, I ended up running a small-medium sized gaming community for several years. Website, Wiki, BBS, Teamspeak, Calendars, Events, etc. So I have a good deal of experience in this matter.
The vast majority of communications that take place, in my observations, are:
1) text messages - just people text messaging in a channel that may or may not be about a specific topic.
2) Memes & Videos - posting links that turn into pictures you can see right in that channel and links that turn into embedded video so you can watch it there.
3) Voice Chat - multiple voice chat channels where we can control the voice quality.
Using a BBS or contributing to a Wiki were done but in such small amounts that it was negligible. Nobody wants to dive through a hierarchy on a BBS to post in the correct place anymore. We had them and it was barely used. Our users just dumped stuff that could have went there into the text chat area of whatever voice chat tool we used. They didn't care to expand the knowledge of all the other users, they just wanted to send it to a close friend or two they happen to be talking to at the time.
Above all, I'd say around 95% of the users will NEVER pay for anything. Donate to keep the Teamspeak servers online? Nope. They have money for a gaming rig PC and monthly subscriptions to a MMORPG, but 1$ per month to keep the lights on? "Sorry, can't this month." When the last of the 5% that is willing to pay leave, it all comes crashing down and the lights are all turned off. Deleted.
That brings me to Discord. Say what you will, but it accomplishes all the requirements. Texting, Memes, Videos, Voice, & it's FREE. Bonus: Game Streaming to your buddies, & Bots to do things like Application Forms or to Play music in the Voice Chat. And there's a phone app, if that is your fancy. I know some that used the phone app for Voice Chat by using their cellular data so they could focus their slow PC connection all on the game.
Is Discord the perfect communications app? No. But is it good enough? Yes. And that is mostly due to it being FREE.
I migrated that community that used to pay some hosting company about $120 per month over to Discord when all the Whales (the 5% that paid for things) left. Long before that, I was reducing plans & cutting unused Teamspeak capacity. Had it down to less than $20 per month. But it was just one guy that was paying for it. Eventually they stopped. I was able to build out what we need in Discord in about 2 hours of work. Honestly, Discord was the only real option. Me and two others did research. The other options just did not check all the boxes for us. YMMV.
Personally, I hate the way text and voice channels are displayed on a server's side bar in Discord. Very confusing at first because only difference between them is a small icon to the left. But past that, the text channels are very SMS like and it feels like you are just in a group chat on your phone. Probably why the young users like it....and if they use the phone app then it is merely just another chat app they have used. IMHO, the "targeting" Discord did at young users was simply making it look & feel like a phone app.
Discord is like irc 2.0 (Score:4)
Personally, I'm a fan. I don't care about the privacy element (I never have, I respect that it's important to others but I just don't care) and I don't really mind electron. In return, I get better organization of channels and topics, rich content support if I want (I do not, I have it so it just shows me links), voice channels, video chat if I ever want it, custom emoticons (I really didn't think I'd care... but I do), and a lot of other stuff. It's nice. It's what I'd have said irc 2.0 should look like if you'd asked me ten years ago. I get that it has drawbacks and a lot of people really hate it... but none of the downsides bother me, all the value adds are stuff I want, and honestly it has facilitated a lot of great and fun discussions with people I wouldn't have met without it. Which is exactly the effect irc had on me when I discovered it.
Decentralized social media (Score:2)
DIscord is decentralized social media. You can hop from server to server, each with its own rules, bots and layout, each independent. That's why there are so many porn discord servers nowadays.
Discord: perfect for the irresponsible (Score:2)
The main thing I don't like about Discord is that it provides no easy way for you to _manually_ or automatically save your conversations. Have been in multiple groups associated with an mmo, that use discord for distributing information about the game and coordinating group play sessions.
The part that gets really frustrating is that many times plans are created to do something a certain way, where the plans are later changed due to private channel lobbying efforts some engage in when because of some suppos