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Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

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

#191

Post by lmm »

lostmsu wrote: post #68
freehunter wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I played CS:Source in a clan, we had Teamspeak that we rented a server for. When I played WoW and Guild Wars with a small group of friends, we used Skype because it was free. Early-to-mid 2000s.

I must be a mammoth, as I still use Skype for gaming. What does Discord offer, that Skype doesn't, and Steam is running anyway too? Lately Skype became too buggy to use as IM, but sound is still solid.

> What does Discord offer, that Skype doesn't

How about "Not being too buggy to use as IM"?

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

#192

Post by falcor84 »

x220 wrote: post #180
buckysock wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huxley : soma soma soma

How is it different when adults spend excess mental energy on video games instead of their career? Both are inherently meaningless and illusory.

Careers are inherently meaningless?! Would you mind elaborating?

The way I see it, advancing in one's career is about gaining more and more skills and experience to merit a higher paycheck, which is a proxy for the value one provides to their employers and the market in general. The proxy is definitely not perfect, but it's the best one we have.

So under this view a career is inherently meaningless, at least if you are willing to attribute meaning to people providing value to one another, which I definitely do. I don't think that video gaming (at least on one's own) is as meaningful for society.

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

#194

Post by Springtime »

SL61 wrote: post #78
dvt wrote: post #16

I'm bearish on Discord. Unlike Slack, it targets a price-averse demographic and is attempting to enter spaces that are very saturated (Steam, Origin, Epic, Ubisoft are already crushing the digital distribution medium), so then it's basically an IRC replacement for gamers. I understand Slack's valuation as it targets huge companies with up to decades-long contracts and has projected revenues > $1B for this year, but I…

I'm gonna have to disagree with you there. Gamers today are not price-averse like they might have been when the gaming demographic was mostly teens. After a peek at your website, I see I'm quite a bit younger than you. I know a lot of people who do not have much money, but they still consider it worth it to spend a chunk of their limited income on Discord Nitro. In some servers I've even seen young teens (13-14) spen…

> I know a lot of people who do not have much money, but they still consider it worth it to spend a chunk of their limited income on Discord Nitro.

I'm often surprised the type of people who are willing to pay for Nitro on Discord just for the cross-channel and animated emoticon support. I've been in communities with college students who despite posting how they're struggling to pay the rent will still keep up their Nitro subscription. The majority won't be subscribers (like most services with a free tier) but I think some underestimate those who would be, especially when targeting a mostly gaming demographic which I think has changed over the years in terms of spending habits.

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

#195

Post by wodenokoto »

hestefisk wrote: post #193

How can something as basic as a chat technology be valued at so much? Seems crazy when there much more important problems to solve. Maybe I am missing something :)

Yes you are. The communications industry has enormous value and implications for basically any other problem we as humans work on.

Anyone who can come with a tool that makes communications marginally more effective has come up with a tool that has great value.

What you are missing is the part where messaging is a solved problem.

We've come far from telegraph and fax machines, but still have a long way to go.

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

#196

Post by hnauz »

devwastaken wrote: post #132

As much as I want something like discord to succeed, it throws all cautions to the wind with user data. There is rentention in two databases of every chat message sent. If somebody ever gets access they could crawl all their info and learn most of their private life through it. Steam on the other hand will not retain more than 5ish of the last messages. I'd say it's fine aslong as users could set a duration for their…

There is no way to massively delete your past messages. In addition to that:

1. If you close a private message window and are not friends with the person or share a server with them, there is no way to open it again, so you've lost access to that chat history and can't delete your messages from there.

2. If you get banned from a server, you lose access to that server's history and can't delete your messages from it.

3. If you delete your account, your messages are not deleted and stay in all private conversations and servers forever.

Their data management is simply terrible. Personally, I would've deleted my account already, but I don't feel comfortable knowing I can't delete my past messages and that they may add that option later.

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

#197

Post by hnauz »

zacharycohn wrote: post #101
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…

> Discord isn't just for gamers. That's true! It's also very popular among neo nazis.

[flagged]

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

#198

Post by uncletaco »

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…

Uh... Son I grew up poor and adjacent to some housing projects. There wasn’t a single household with kids that didn’t have a console. Even kids from the projects had a console of some kind. I remember being five and begging my older cousins to let me play their Nintendo in 1992. The only difference between now and then is that consoles have gone from being a toy you bought your kids to a media device that sits in your living room.

And I hate to be insulting but I can’t imagine you being an adult. I’m fairly certain every adult here knew who sonic and Mario were and none of us would be so ignorant as to say gaming only went mainstream in the last fifteen years.

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

#200

Post by gsich »

starshadowx2 wrote: post #31
discorded wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is already considered uncool among a pretty influential crowd of users, people are sick of how laggy it is compared to other services and it is now a product no one asked for with the new store. The fact it is also a gigantic datamining operation also is not going over so well.

I'm a pretty big discord user, early supporter/nitro/hypesquad and all that, and I have never heard of this "influential crowd" calling it uncool. All I've seen is servers getting larger and more servers popping up. Discord themselves just ran a Snowsgiving server which raised 100k for charity in under a week and had ~10k people in it at any time I checked chatting. I don't have any lag on any devices nor do I hear o…

You can bet that they save every audio sample you generate.
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