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Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

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Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#121
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not matrix?

My username and favorite aliases were taken. Discord allows anyone to share the same username. It appends a nearly invisible hash to disambiguate, and you can even change it. Discord does usernames right.

hmm, so on public discord servers if someone copies my nickname and pretends to be me, someone might not easily notice?

Seems like a pretty readily used vulnerability. I remember back in high school on AIM someone made a username very similar to mine and said some nasty things to a girl I was talking to - she told me to stop talking to her and I didn't figure out why until years later. I imagine the same exploit could be done more easily if you can use the same username and discord actively tries to hide the hash.

Maybe I'm just overly sensitive since impersonation has hurt me, though.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#122
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The whole Settings app also feels like something thrown together in a really primitive GUI scripting language that doesn't support anything besides text and its alignment. This is the old disk management utility: https://i.imgur.com/AqhYewC.jpg This is the new one: https://i.imgur.com/DNb0qJl.jpg While the old was far from perfect, it at least gave visual hints to how partitions relate to disks. The new """design"""…

That's one painful side-by-side

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than being a hellscape in 6 months-2 years due to forced integration with Teams.

I think Microsoft is smarter than that, look at Github for example, people have largely forgotten it's owned by MSFT. They would have left Discord as a gaming platform and used it's tech in Teams instead. Teams is so behind Discord in all areas except video quality.

What fields are that exactly?

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#124
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to pitch discord in the workplace, especially against an incumbent like Slack or Teams. It comes across as very "casual" and unprofessional, which is a shame, because it really is a top-quality product. It's never seemed to be a focus of Discord, it's just the niche they've chosen. Even their own homepage description doesn't mention work: > Whether you’re part of a school club, gaming group, worldwide art c…

I’ve used Discord only for gaming and I would prefer all the non-voice stuff to be able to be hidden. If it wasn’t the most reliable audio for group voice chat that we’ve tried (Steam voice is still an echo-y mess for us three, Signal wouldn’t connect us, and then I conceded and went back to Discord), we’d use something else. I don’t like that it tracks what we’re playing, that it tries to be friendly with its treacl…

For gaming, you might enjoy Teamspeak. It's closed-source, but you can run own your server, it's very much focused on voice comms, uses Opus and (IMO) has better audio filters.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#125
post #70

So what is Discord's path to profitability? They tried selling video games and closed the store not too long after launching it. Nitro/Server Boosts definitely don't come close to the cost of operation.

How do you know that? Why would it be expensive to run a glorified irc server network?

Discord has voice chat, file uploads, and image and video hosting.

It’s not just glorified IRC. The bandwidth and storage costs are real.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#126
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord has a business model: Get people engaged in a community, sell them Nitro so they can boost their communities [1][2]. The "buy benefits for you community" scheme is wildly successful in mobile games, so I wouldn't be surprised if it works well for Discord. 1: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028038352-S... 2: https://discord.com/nitro

The fact that they are trying to sell/IPO is pretty strong evidence that they are not profitable, I think. But regardless, I will give them massive props for not just doing the ad thing, which is the last gasp of this style of startup before they finish circling the drain. Lookin' at you, Imgur.

I would in all honesty give them even bigger props, as someone who used to be but isn't a fan anymore. They tried to add a game store a la steam into it but realized it didn't get the engagement they'd hoped for so they stopped putting time and effort into it and shut it down.

My first impression when they first added it was that they'd just shove it down people's throats and keep trying to make it work.

I hope I'm not wrong about them getting rid of it again and I've just gotten used to tuning all that out when using discord.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#127
I just don’t see what Discord’s path towards profitability is. Are they going to try to start an online store again? Sell enough Nitro subs?

I think they are playing hard ball for a better acquisition deal, but they risk being irrelevant before ever getting a better deal.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#128
post #42
post #4

Let's hope that Discord doesn't end up going the way of Slack. Since Slack got overconfident over Microsoft Teams and lost and got acquired by Salesforce.

I don't think they got overconfident at all - I think that slack was relatively well built but lacking too much of a value proposition to differentiate themselves. Then they got acquired before anyone realized how much of their usage was marketing driven and how little was driven by the quality of their application. I'm not saying it's bad by any means - in fact the search functionality is pretty sweet... but there i…

> I don't think they got overconfident at all

https://slack.com/intl/en-nz/blog/news/dear-microsoft

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#129
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a fucking amazing product from day one and they have a lot of features. I only wish they release a non gaming branded version

What would a non-gaming version distinguish from the current one?

Probably better support around auth and identity.

They do support things like twitch subscriber-exclusive channels, so I think there's something there. And I don't use discord enough to know the ins-and-outs of how restrictive you can be with auth.

But I imagine you'd want to have SSO and some kind of managed directory, security groups, and all that. I don't know if discord supports that today.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#130
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Glad I'm not the only one thinking this. Seems obvious, but I always felt like I was missing something. How is it that most of the tech/SV world is just the same con being run over and over again, yet it keeps working? Does it operate on the same psychological glitch as a lottery? Do the giant corps buying these startups all think "I know how it's been in the past, but surely THIS startup WON'T turn to shit the momen…

Some acquisitions are just to eliminate potential competitors.
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