Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by Nullabillity » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 12:36 PM UTC

Bayart wrote: post #151

dvt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I think it's more about scale. Mumble and co. have good enough noise cancelling and management options that it's reasonable to have 30+ people in the same channel. Skype becomes a mess around 4-5 people. Discord is still much worse than Mumble, but apparently still close enough that people can't be bothered to set anything else up.

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

#212

Post by taesko » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

sfifs wrote: post #157

Aeolun wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-)

That's a very interesting statement. Could you share some more information about what events in history or research in "evolutionary biology" suggest this ?

I don't know where to start searching from for this information...

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

#213

Post by shiburizu » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 2:27 PM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #150

Discord is in this weird situation where they've been massively successful at some specific things that people aren't willing to spend money on, and not, as best as I can tell, anywhere else. They're absolutely the community chat tool of choice these days - just about every subreddit you go to, every fandom you could ever think of, has a discord community. It's incredibly easy to put one together. But things like Nit…

Why do people think this? I know a good chunk of users I interact with every day pay for their Nitro subscription. It's not crazy to think I can buy a game or two on it as well. They partnered with Warframe, I think things are going well.

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

#214

Post by patzal » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #130

derefr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> "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.) This doesn't strike me as a useful definition of mainstream. I live in Vietnam and I guarantee you that no one here could tell you a single thing about baseball, The…

some additional data age distribution (pew research 2015) "Although playing video games is especially popular among young adults, a substantial number of older adults play video games as well. More than half (58%) of those ages 30 to 49 play video games, along with 40% of those ages 50 to 64 and 25% of those 65 or older."

I'm pretty sure this was different in the 80s.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/15/who-plays-video-games-...

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

#215

Post by keerthiko » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

uncletaco wrote: post #198

derefr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 you…

Thanks for your America-centric anecdotal perspective presented as all-encompassing. I never knew a pokemon besides Pikachu until I was 18, and I was by far the most avid gamer in my school. Yes I knew sonic and mario, but had barely played 2 hours of those games at arcades because my parents wouldn't give me change for (played at rich friends' birthday parties in the arcade). We all have our experiences.

Your "insult" literally corroborates what I'm saying. Until within the last 15 years, we weren't adults. The "adults" of then very likely did not know who sonic and Mario were, even if their kids did. Now that we're adults, adults know who sonic and mario are. And so do our kids. And maybe some of our parents. That's the point.

Please don't start of comments on HN calling people "son", then claim to "hate to be insulting", then proceed to insult people. None of that was necessary to make your points.

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

#216

Post by beerlord » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 3:01 PM UTC

cflewis wrote: post #23

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 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.

I think it would be an even better buy for Epic Games. It would give their Epic Games Store immediate credibility, and add all of the communication and community features that they are currently lacking.

A Microsoft buyout would kill the thing just like Skype.

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

#217

Post by Spivak » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 3:53 PM UTC

hnauz wrote: post #196

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.…

How does allowing you to delete your messages jive with the UX of other users?

If every user you sent a message to had a copy of your message would you expect those to be deleted as well? Isn't that the recipient's data?

Assuming you answered no is there a material difference when you store a single copy and do reference counting?

Discord's UI might be lacking but allowing you to delete messages authored by you but ownwed by another is already pretty privacy oriented.

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

#218

Post by mbesto » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

tenryuu wrote: post #146

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…

Steam holds messages for the past two weeks, you can see these messages I the support tools. GDPR complaincy

FYI - their support tools are almost entirely disconnected from Steam itself.

Source - know owner of said support tool software.

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

#219

Post by floatboth » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

bscphil wrote: post #160

elefanten wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Matrix is very much there, and a very cool thing about it is that it allows bridging between e.g. IRCMatrixTelegram!

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

#220

Post by degenerate » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #80

trophycase wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please god don't say that. M$'s acquisition of Skype is a lot of the reason we use Discord now.

After over six months of being harrased with “upgrade your skype for better experience”, I finally buckled up and clicked “ok”. When Skype came back in less than five minutes I felt that Microsoft read my mind, pickup all the features I loved and used daily, and deleted them off their new version! it simply blew my mind! In addition everything worked different! New Skype is entirely new messanger, not Skype upgrade.…

The new UI is the most anti-user-friendly thing I have ever seen. They took something so simple and made it absolutely hard to use. I work with many non-tech people and they hate it. Skype is done.