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Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

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Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#151

Post by Bayart »

dvt wrote: post #25
cflewis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Discord is a clear buy for someone like Microsoft. It gives them a big leg up, and doesn't really compete with Skype in the demographics.

Completely agree. Skype was the gamer go-to for a while, in fact.

For the entire time that I've been (PC) gaming, that is starting in the early 2000s, people have been using Teamspeak/Mumble/Ventrilo and recently entirely transitioned to Discord. Everybody either had their own VoIP server or hopped on a friend's. I've never seen Skype used consistently. The assumption being that Skype has just too much overhead. Which is comical when you think about what Discord is.

But maybe that's just an EU tropism.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#152

Post by bytematic »

elefanten wrote: post #123
crocodiletears wrote: post #66

Discord isn't just for gamers. Though that's where it started, its robust community management features have made it's a go-to for online creators looking to engage with their audiences. It's especially prominent among Youtubers, and is increasingly becoming seen in some circles as a safer alternative to public forums like Reddit for topical discourse. This is, in my opinion because there's no formal discoverability…

Do you know of any comparison between use of Discord and Slack for these kind of community management use cases? Is either one used more and what are the relevant feature differences?

They are essentially the exact same except discord has voice servers and no real premium limits

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#154

Post by Clever321 »

shshhdhs wrote: post #42

I never understood these ~13.3x valuations. If I invest $5 in a lemonade stand, what makes it valued at $66.50?

I would venture it's the huge amount of monthly active users. 200M users at just $1 a year (or month) is a lot of money compared to the $150M they just picked up in debt.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#155

Post by robryan »

stevehawk wrote: post #40
dvt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. Skype was the gamer go-to for a while, in fact.

as a gamer I have to ask "when was that?"

I think mostly for small groups. For groups of friends Skype was usable, for guilds it was terrible.

There was a period when I went back to a WoW expansion that everyone was trying to go everyone onto Skype for pickup groups which was a horrible experience.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#156

Post by westoque »

I'm happy for Discord since I know they're a big user of Elixir [0]. I'm sure it will make the Elixir language stronger and will make it a strong candidate for apps in the future. Much like how Twitter/GitHub did for Rails.

[0]: https://blog.discordapp.com/scaling-elixir-f9b8e1e7c29b

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#157

Post by sfifs »

Aeolun wrote: post #126
scoggs wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well to me the question is: How many too-young-to-work online gamers are there who have parents willing to pay for their subscriptions / games / in-game purchases? We already know that these kids who don't have enough (or any of their own) money have a computer, internet access, and the ability to purchase all of the peripherals and a game needed to play. What's making companies stop and say, "We don't think the peop…

I certainly expect children to stop being born. Looking at how expensive it is to raise even one, I quickly see it become an upper class thing to be able to afford a child.

Unlikely to ever happen. History suggests that the way evolutionary biology corrects this is revolution or invasion :-)

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#158

Post by ineedasername »

derefr wrote: post #118
ineedasername wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's entered the mainstream less than 10 years ago. It surpassed the film industry not 2 years" I don't know how you could think this unless you mean something like esports gaming. Gaming has been mainstream for quite some time, as early as the late 80's I'd say, complete with tv show, toy, and movie tie ins. PC gaming was a little less prevalent, they cost a lot more than consoles of the era.

"Mainstream" as in something that you could have a reasonable expectation of having a coherent conversation about with any/every human being on the planet. (For example, "baseball" is relatively mainstream. "The Beatles", or "Elvis", slightly moreso.) As recently as 15 years ago, a "game console" (home or portable) was mostly something upper-middle-class children owned. 10 years ago, we all got smartphones, and those…

15 years ago, a "game console" (home or portable) was mostly something upper-middle-class children owned

No. Unless you're talking about a country other than the US, this is absolutely incorrect.

Original Playstation sold more than 40,000,000 units in the U.S., and in the same console generation N64 sold another 20,000,000. On the portable front, the original Gameboy & Color version, beginning in 1989, sold more than 40,000,000 units. Keep in mind, there were only about 80,000,000 households.

There are not 40,000,000 upper-middle class households in the US. For reference, the original gameboy cost $90, roughly $180 in today's money. This is not out of reach for even poorer households. In today's dollars, even if you draw the "upper middle" line relatively low at about $100k for a family of 3, there's only about 30 million households at that level, and 16 million of them don't even have kids.

I'm not debating that video games have become even more popular in recent years, but they were mainstream long before that. "Mainstream" doesn't mean "everyone". The simple wiktionary definition is simply "Used or accepted broadly rather than by small portions of a population or market." I'd be hard pressed to say that millions upon millions of console owners isn't "used broadly".

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#160

Post by bscphil »

elefanten wrote: post #123
crocodiletears wrote: post #66

Discord isn't just for gamers. Though that's where it started, its robust community management features have made it's a go-to for online creators looking to engage with their audiences. It's especially prominent among Youtubers, and is increasingly becoming seen in some circles as a safer alternative to public forums like Reddit for topical discourse. This is, in my opinion because there's no formal discoverability…

Do you know of any comparison between use of Discord and Slack for these kind of community management use cases? Is either one used more and what are the relevant feature differences?

And perhaps, additionally, someone might have suggestions for a high quality open source alternative? Riot/Matrix don't seem to be there quite yet.
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