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Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

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Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#31
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe... Teams is utter garbage in my opinion, but I don't think acquiring Discord would solve that. Skype seems like a similar acquisition, and look how that turned out.

Microsoft has trouble with UI design and it only got worse. Think about the "help" buttons that are on win system preferences, instead of directing you to the option they send you to google or bing. It's ridiculous.

UI design? Teams has no UI design, but haphazardly aranged buttons that are hard to spot.

I can't describe how bad of experience it is to use.

How does a corp that actively pushes their users/clients into using Teams makes no UX effort.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#32
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe... Teams is utter garbage in my opinion, but I don't think acquiring Discord would solve that. Skype seems like a similar acquisition, and look how that turned out.

Microsoft has trouble with UI design and it only got worse. Think about the "help" buttons that are on win system preferences, instead of directing you to the option they send you to google or bing. It's ridiculous.

IF you want a really ridicilous example of Microsoft's inability to deal with UX, try changing literally anything that has to do with sound in Windows, and tell me how many separate sound-related configuration applications there are, and what are the paths to opening them.

Then, ask someone who never used Windows XP to explain to you what each of those configuration applications is responsible for. (So they won't be able to lean on the crutch of "Oh, this one is the exact same thing as the sound application in Windows 98...")

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#33
post #2

What about Discord besides network effect makes it a desirable holding? Do they have any technological advantage?

It's arguably the best software in the "modern IRC" space.

Sure, anyone else could catch up, but Discord has a core audience that cares about latency, low resource use, reliable effortless voice channels and good UX, while Discord's competition seems to move in the opposite direction.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#34
post #2

What about Discord besides network effect makes it a desirable holding? Do they have any technological advantage?

They have users. If they wanted to they could become the next Steam tomorrow by simply selling games and giving deals. The engaged userbase of discord far surpasses steam, epic, and all other gaming clients. Valve doesn't care about competing or innovating, theyll simply roll over and let it happen.

But like any startup discord is created with monopoly money and therefore they don't have any actual knowledge, expertise, or good way of gaining revenue. They're designed to spend ridiculous amounts of money to get users and sell to a megacorp. They have no ability to manage a business that requires money outside of their investors monopoly money.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#35
post #12

so.... Discord will be a hellscape in 3-5 years as its inevitably destroyed by corporate greed?

Aye, nothing like investor pressure and quarterly growth targets to kill an otherwise good company/product.

This is how tech startups work, isn't it? Use investors to build a product with no business model, then the founders cash out via purchase or IPO, and soon after the fact that you have no business model comes to light and the product falls apart trying to find a business model, while users move on to the next shiny thing with no business model.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#36
post #2

What about Discord besides network effect makes it a desirable holding? Do they have any technological advantage?

The UX and featureset of Discord is impressive. The UX in particular is superior to Slack, Teams, or any other modern chat application I've used. I'd like to move my group to Matrix, but Element (fka Riot.im) is nowhere near as polished or user-friendly as Discord.

Have you ever tried to disable notifications on Discord? I have tried to do it 500 times and still get those annoying red dots with numbers, red dots without numbers, and just a few weeks ago I started getting random notification sounds (after I had disabled them before) without any clue where they were coming from.

My only option is trying to disable all notifications and all notification sounds everywhere, but still I get those dots even when I'm not mentioned.

edit:

I think the root of the problem is that Discord is trying to game the user attention/retention/time spent in app by flooding the user with notifications. In IRC, you had to explicitly enable every notification, otherwise you'd never get notified of anything. "Disable everything by default unless I turn it on" seems to be made as difficult as possible on Discord.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#37
post #7
post #3

Considering the state of Teams they really needed Discord for their amazing technology of actually being semi responsive

Teams definitely feels like it was rushed to market to take advantage of the pandemic. I'm really sad our company moved us from Slack to Teams. It's so much worse, especially on Linux

Teams was present long before the pandemic.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#38
post #3

Considering the state of Teams they really needed Discord for their amazing technology of actually being semi responsive

Been using Teams for school for two years now and have zero complaints.

Have you used other software like Discord though to have a frame of reference?

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#39
post #3

Considering the state of Teams they really needed Discord for their amazing technology of actually being semi responsive

MS already owned Skype for over half a decade before they made Teams and Teams voice/video chat is still vastly inferior than Skype. How would owning a bunch more IP that they‘re ignoring help?
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