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Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

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Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#11

Post by WeylandYutani »

serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

Gamefaqs and the surprisingly decent Steam forums are still able to answer any questions I have.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#12

Post by mcintyre1994 »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #4

The article feels a bit over the top, if I'm reading this correctly this is just Discord becoming a direct competitor to Patreon (as many Patreons already basically boil down to "get access to my Discord server")

Yep, and "different Patreon tiers get different channels" is already super common too. Presumably people currently do that with something like Zapier and a Discord bot and Discord can make it way simpler if they just sell the subscription instead. Makes perfect sense for them IMO.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#13

Post by Deukhoofd »

fidotron wrote: post #9

Somewhere in here is the potential for Discord to become a big game/app platform by itself. It may prove to be a bit like the Facebook games explosion. It’s kind of surprising that turn based games within discord aren’t really a thing.

It is, they rolled it out to everyone over the past month.

https://discord.com/blog/server-activities-games-voice-watch...

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#14

Post by dandellion »

serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

Public communities like reddit and twitter keep getting worse, and with people going increasingly to a closed community like Discord, I feel like we're entering the dark ages of the internet. It really sucks, I hope we'll se some sort of renaissance after.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#15

Post by Levitz »

Filligree wrote: post #6
serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

> I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. Their app isn't buggy, is easy to use, voice chat and screen sharing just work , and it's extremely easy to onboard yourself -- you don't even need to create an account immediately. Love it or hate it, let's not pretend it's lik…

Voice chat alone was an absolute gamechanger. The alternative at the time was either crappy free solutions or you just paid for a server. It's really no surprise it got super popular.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#16

Post by nerdix »

veave wrote: post #5
serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

It's very easy, they created a product that was better than the alternatives. It's better than forums, it's better than IRC, it's better than teamspeak, and the list goes on. Turns out it's a pretty easy product to make, too - as long as you are willing to burn money.

I must be missing something fundamental because from where I'm standing, it's worse than forums in every way possible.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#17

Post by a13o »

This is a really smart move for them. They were downstream of a lot of other creator platforms, and now they can start to move that revenue over to them.

Discord has a really well-built server permission model, and a rich API bot ecosystem. I bet there's brand new business opportunities made possible by this change. They're effectively a platform now.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#18

Post by davikr »

fidotron wrote: post #9

Somewhere in here is the potential for Discord to become a big game/app platform by itself. It may prove to be a bit like the Facebook games explosion. It’s kind of surprising that turn based games within discord aren’t really a thing.

I kinda wish Discord had a social feed where you could post to your friends, as long as there weren't any ads, or temporary Stories, but I feel like this is an uncommon opinion.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#19

Post by veave »

AnonCoward42 wrote: post #8
veave wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy, they created a product that was better than the alternatives. It's better than forums, it's better than IRC, it's better than teamspeak, and the list goes on. Turns out it's a pretty easy product to make, too - as long as you are willing to burn money.

Discord is really bad as a forum. It's just not made for this purpose.

When people say Discord is bad as a forum I'm reminded of Ford's quote "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#20

Post by bovermyer »

veave wrote: post #5
serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

It's very easy, they created a product that was better than the alternatives. It's better than forums, it's better than IRC, it's better than teamspeak, and the list goes on. Turns out it's a pretty easy product to make, too - as long as you are willing to burn money.

Better than Teamspeak, yes. Better than IRC? Eh, I guess so.

But let's chat about that "better than forums" supposition.

- Forums are easy for search engines to index

- Old threads on forums are easily discoverable

- Forums have good threading in general

- Individual forums are completely independent of each other (if one goes down, the others don't care)

- It's easy to have completely different identities on different forums

Tell me how Discord does each of these better.

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