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Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

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Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#191

Post by DrBazza »

I can't remember where I read it (likely Joel Spolsky, or Paul Graham), but there was an article about businesses that thrive in the shadow of FAANG + MS and others because even though they're in the same business they don't compete in a way that's worth the big guys chasing.

In this case, MS Teams is obsessed with Office integration as it's key selling point. Which in turn means business workers. Whereas Discord users don't care about calendar integration and so on.

Modern chat apps are a Venn diagram with a modest intersection.

I can't see how Discord can get more users without losing original users. Basically, a demographic shift. And then you're in the big guys territory where they additionally have 'killer features' already and that's where businesses get bought or fold.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#192

Post by globular-toast »

sadness3 wrote: post #93

I have a bad feeling about this. Discord essentially does one thing really well. I don't want to see it go down the way of so many chat platforms trying to be everything and becoming a bloated mess. Recently, they replaced the fun, gamery loading messages with something more "formal". Now it does it's one thing slightly less well. The first of many casualties, no doubt. It makes me despair of business models which re…

> I have a bad feeling about this. Discord essentially does one thing really well. I don't want to see it go down the way of so many chat platforms trying to be everything and becoming a bloated mess.

IRC does one thing and does it well. Discord is the bloated mess.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#193

Post by Shacklz »

themacguffinman wrote: post #127
mihaifm wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is the tech world is changing very fast. If you're going to sit idle hoping to make the same amount of cash every year, you're going to disappear within 5-6 years. Not liking where Discord is headed either, just saying some change is necessary not only for growing, but for staying relevant.

This is exactly what happened to Teamspeak, they sat on their arses for ages without changing much of anything. Now it's hard to imagine them getting back any major market share in popular communities ever again. That seems like a death sentence for a social application.

There's a difference between "sitting on their arses" and "trying to grab every single customer possible".

TeamSpeak didn't bother to acknowledge that a lot of people often just want to write some messages to others without actually hopping into a channel/server, let alone a VoIP-channel. Their synchronous-only communication philosophy via community-maintained servers just didn't pan out.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#194

Post by saladuh »

gefhfff wrote: post #164
tester34 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you name at least two other platforms that offer at least Decent chat (file sharing, emojis, support for code snippets), decent voice chat, decent streaming and supports PUSH2TALK button? and I personally prefer when it is not self-hosted due to DDoS risk, but it's not must have. and is e.g F/OSS? Because I'm unable to name and that's why I started using Discord

Element[0]: hast everything except probably push to talk. You can freely choose a real server and can talk to anyone on any other server. [0]: https://element.io

> Element

Fyi in case anyone reading this didn't know, Element is a client for the Matrix protocol, by the people who are the prominent developers and supporters for the Matrix Foundation.

Matrix only has inbuilt support for 1 on 1 calls right now, it (Element) uses Jitsi for group/channel calls. Native Matrix group calls and video calls are coming very soon, along with (hopefully) push to talk in the Element client, and custom emoji for those who like that stuff.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#195

Post by midnightGhost »

Amasuriel wrote: post #52

I’ve used discord for a long time and greatly prefer it to slack, teams and Mattermost (the three competitors I’ve used most often). Ironically the only think stopping me from strongly advocating for its adoption in business is that I’m already a user! Much like GitHub and to a lesser extent teams, they seem to not get the idea that I have different personas related to different parts of my life that absolutely shoul…

Discord now lets you change your username and avatar per server. Though to have a different avatar on different servers you need nitro.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#196

Post by mynameismon »

DrBazza wrote: post #191

I can't remember where I read it (likely Joel Spolsky, or Paul Graham), but there was an article about businesses that thrive in the shadow of FAANG + MS and others because even though they're in the same business they don't compete in a way that's worth the big guys chasing. In this case, MS Teams is obsessed with Office integration as it's key selling point. Which in turn means business workers. Whereas Discord use…

This reminds me of the 'Law of Line Extension'[0].

What I think they can successfully do, is rebrand as a new product (Accord is a name that might suit it, given the nature of office communications), disassociate any gamer connections, and link it to Discord by adding an account switcher.

[0]: https://ericsink.com/laws/Law_12.html

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#197

Post by basisword »

In my limited experience Discord seems almost identical to Slack but with a much worse UI. Combine that with the fact that belonging to more than one server quickly becomes overwhelming (again, largely due to crappy UX) I’m concerned about how many communities are utilising it.

Can somebody that likes it explain why it seems to be doing so well?

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#198

Post by dunefox »

cblconfederate wrote: post #121
tester34 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you name at least two other platforms that offer at least Decent chat (file sharing, emojis, support for code snippets), decent voice chat, decent streaming and supports PUSH2TALK button? and I personally prefer when it is not self-hosted due to DDoS risk, but it's not must have. and is e.g F/OSS? Because I'm unable to name and that's why I started using Discord

Would you also like fries with that? Of course you arent going to get the same for $0 (discord is not free, you re just wasting investor money). Mattermost is the best self-hosted alternative and it works great for the chat part. Dont know about the rest.

> works great for the chat part. Dont know about the rest.

Great, so it's not an alternative at all.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#199

Post by d3nj4l »

sadness3 wrote: post #93

I have a bad feeling about this. Discord essentially does one thing really well. I don't want to see it go down the way of so many chat platforms trying to be everything and becoming a bloated mess. Recently, they replaced the fun, gamery loading messages with something more "formal". Now it does it's one thing slightly less well. The first of many casualties, no doubt. It makes me despair of business models which re…

> Recently, they replaced the fun, gamery loading messages with something more "formal". Now it does it's one thing slightly less well. The first of many casualties, no doubt.

This is funny because my impression was that Discord users by and large hated those messages.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#200

Post by Dowwie »

haunter wrote: post #130

True sign of success: HN doesn't get the appeal of the product and they wonder why people are using it. This have happened so many times, it's actually a good indicator.

Are you remembering the negative anecdotal evidence and disregarding the predictions that were right?

Has anyone conducted a study of HN sentiments?

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